NAMA has put hundreds of properties on the market but it is not actually doing the selling.

Potential investors are told to go to the NAMA website and if they see a property they are interested in then they should contact the receiver listed.

Once they do that, any sale should go ahead in the normal way and it’s still up to buyers to do their full due diligence.

NAMA does plan to introduce a specialised mortgage for home buyers this year that will include a scheme were NAMA, not the buyer, takes the hit if property falls in value.

Once NAMA really gets going with apartment sales, it plans to have banks already teed up to provide these new mortgages.

That’s not available yet.

NAMA is already prepared to put up some of the funds for commercial property deals though.

For some of the bigger commercial properties on its books, NAMA is offering buyers something called “staple financing.” It’s where a seller finances the sale of its own asset — charging interest just like any other buyer.

Staple financing should help shift commercial property even if the banks aren’t lending. But it has been criticised in the past for inflating property values when sellers offer more than normal lenders would in order to maximise their own sale prices.

Irish Independent