KBC loan sell-off a ‘slippery slope’

KBC Bank’s sell-off of a massive portfolio of loans yesterday – including €900million of mortgages on around 3,200 rental homes – has been described as the ‘slippery slope’.

David Hall of the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation which campaigns for struggling home owners said that despite the bank’s denials that it was selling home loans, the move would affect the tenants in those homes.

Mr Hall said: ‘They’re buy-to-let loans they’re selling.’

‘They [KBC] said they’re not homeloans, it’s a slight play on words because they’re somebody’s home – they’re tenancies.

‘If tenants have been badly affected by these loans sales... they’ve got no real voice or representation.

‘So effectively, they’re the same as family homes and many of these buyto-let homes will have families in them.

‘They’ve got no say as they’ve only got a lease that has an expiry time on it.

‘The slippery slope has started. We’ve got Permanent TSB selling loans and we’ve got KBC now. There’ll be more to come,’ he said.

The announcement by the Belgianowned bank comes as the group saw its profits in Ireland slashed by a third in the first six months of the year.

The loans being sold off to the global investment bank Goldman Sachs consists of ‘non-performing’ Irish buy-tolet mortgages, performing and ‘nonperforming’ UK buy-to-let mortgages, and ‘non-performing’ corporate loans.

Non-performing means the mortgage-holder is either not keeping up payments or is massively in arrears.

The bank said the value of the loans being sold was €1.9billion, made up of €800million corporate loans, €900million of Irish buy-to-let mortgages and €200million of performing and non-performing UK buy-to-let mortgages.

The bank’s Irish arm made €113million profit in the six months of the year, a fall of almost one third on after-tax profit of €166million last year.