Spotted by DNAse in The Guardian:
London's Olympic Village has been sold to the Qatari ruling family's property company in a deal that leaves UK taxpayers £275m out of pocket. Qatari Diar, the oil-rich state's investment arm, and UK property developer Delancey Estates teamed up to buy the athletes' village next to the Olympic Park in east London for £557m...
Qatari Diar and Delancey plan to turn the bulk of their share of the residences – 1,439 properties – into private rental accommodation, rather than selling them. They say this will create the first UK private sector residential fund of more than 1,000 homes to be owned and directly managed as an investment....
Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, hailed the sale as a "fantastic deal that will give taxpayers a great return and shows how we are securing a legacy from London's Games". The village cost £1.1bn to build, but the ODA insisted it never expected to recoup building costs. "It was an entirely empty site, it didn't have any infrastructure, roads or parks. There was always going to be a public sector contribution to help put those in," said a spokesman.
He added: "We weren't just looking for the highest bidder, but for the best owner with long-term commitment." He said the ODA supported the property investors' plans to turn most of the residences into rental accommodation...
The ODA had to dip into the Olympic contingency fund and use £324m of public funds after a private developer, Lend Lease, failed to put forward a funding package in 2009 due to the financial crisis. That money will now be repaid to the Olympic budget out of the village sale proceeds – this has been uncertain during the economic downturn.
What on earth is Jeremy Hunt talking about, is there anybody who buys land and buildings in the UK without a "long term commitment" and the whole things was taxpayer-funded, why on earth were they not sold to the highest bidder, to the extent that they had to be sold at all? Why not just keep them and collect the rental income on behalf of the UK taxpayer?
Dear Barclays
1 hour ago
4 comments:
They've been told to sell them I guess - to bring in some much needed cash. But building something for a billion and selling it for half as much isn't much of a good deal in my book - normally you'd sack somebody who did that.
"why on earth were they not sold to the highest bidder, to the extent that they had to be sold at all?"
Mark, I think you've missed the point of the Olympics. They're just another vehicle for transferring public money into private pockets.
I'm going to call Jeremy Hunt a filthy liar based on the following article:-
http://m.building.co.uk/news/oda-wins-olympic-village-payback/3081576.article
Building understands that the ODA is on the verge of loaning money to the winning developer in return for a share of any profit from sales.
And this is my memory, too. The Olympic Village was going to be one of the earners, that they'd build it and flog it for more due to the Magic Porridge Pot housing market.
Even if the government is desperate for cash I find it unbelievable that they are prepared to give up the freehold. They are not just transferring tax-payer funded investment to private hands, but chunk of future London economic output (that's "legacy" in my book). And not just private hands but to a foreign state. Incredibly short-sighted.
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