The Saudi Real Estate Refinance Company (SRC) signed an agreement with the Public Pension Agency to acquire a mortgage portfolio worth more than 3 billion Saudi riyals (Dh2.9bn), the biggest ever housing refinancing deal in the kingdom.
The companies said that the agreement represents a significant portion of the Masakin Programme, an initiative by the PPA that provides fixed-rate Murabaha home loans to employees and pensioners from the agency and the General Organisation for Social Insurance (GOSI) to encourage home ownership in the kingdom.
The programme has so far helped to finance more than 9,000 contracts in the last decade.
"This agreement will help the liquidity in the market and help us provide more mortgages to people to buy homes,” Mohammed Al Nahhas, governor of PPA, said.
SRC was founded in 2017 by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, to help increase home ownership among Saudi nationals and develop the mortgage finance market in the kingdom.
It has acquired a number of real estate portfolios from banks and other mortgage financing firms within the kingdom.
“The deal provides liquidity to the real estate financing market, which in turn is expected to bring lower prices and increase the number of mortgage originations – leading to SRC’s goal of improving homeownership rates in the kingdom,” Fabrice Susini, chief executive of SRC, said.
“The agreement provides the mortgage financing industry an opportunity to refinance their assets, that would otherwise be sitting in their books for a decade or two, by offloading mortgage portfolios to SRC. Such an avenue is expected to make the real estate financing market in the kingdom attractive to investors."
SRC said its goal is to deploy more than 20bn riyals, mainly through purchasing mortgage portfolios with an aim to refinance 10 per cent of home loans this year.
The kingdom’s mortgage market is expected to double in size within the next five years as the government pushes to increase home-ownership among its citizens, Fahad Alshathri, deputy governor for supervision at SAMA, said at a conference in Dubai last year.
Saudi Arabia, the Arab world's biggest economy, is aiming to increase home ownership to 60 per cent this year from 50 per cent in 2016 under a state-backed housing programme that encourages lenders and financing companies to allocate more funding to mortgage financing. The provision of housing is one of the key pillars of Vision 2030, the kingdom’s social and economic reform agenda.
Profile of Hala Insurance
Date Started: September 2018
Founders: Walid and Karim Dib
Based: Abu Dhabi
Employees: Nine
Amount raised: $1.2 million
Funders: Oman Technology Fund, AB Accelerator, 500 Startups, private backers
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Started: 2018
Founders: Eslam Hussein and Pulkit Ganjoo
Based: Dubai
Sector: Transport
Size: 9 employees
Investment: $1,275,000
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4,872 matches
1,942 teams
116 pitches
76 nations
26 UAE teams
15 Lebanese teams
2 Kuwaiti teams
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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The specs: 2018 Nissan 370Z Nismo
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Thalassaemia is part of a family of genetic conditions affecting the blood known as haemoglobin disorders.
Haemoglobin is a substance in the red blood cells that carries oxygen and a lack of it triggers anemia, leaving patients very weak, short of breath and pale.
The most severe type of the condition is typically inherited when both parents are carriers. Those patients often require regular blood transfusions - about 450 of the UAE's 2,000 thalassaemia patients - though frequent transfusions can lead to too much iron in the body and heart and liver problems.
The condition mainly affects people of Mediterranean, South Asian, South-East Asian and Middle Eastern origin. Saudi Arabia recorded 45,892 cases of carriers between 2004 and 2014.
A World Health Organisation study estimated that globally there are at least 950,000 'new carrier couples' every year and annually there are 1.33 million at-risk pregnancies.
UK-EU trade at a glance
EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years
Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products
Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries
Smoother border management with use of e-gates
Cutting red tape on import and export of food
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- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
The Details
Article 15
Produced by: Carnival Cinemas, Zee Studios
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PSL FINAL
Multan Sultans v Peshawar Zalmi
8pm, Thursday
Zayed Cricket Stadium, Abu Dhabi
