Housing Financing Fund Explained

The Housing Financing Fund or HFF (Icelandic: Íbúðalánasjóður or ÍLS) is Iceland's government-owned mortgage lender. It grants house purchase and home improvement loans to individual borrowers, loans to build up rental housing stock to local government, companies and residents' organizations. As well as special loans such as for house renovations for the disabled or elderly.

The purpose of the fund is to ensure housing security and equality for all Icelanders on controllable terms.

History

The HFF was created in 1999, following the Housing Act, no. 44/1998, to act a successor to the old Icelandic Housing Authority (IHA, founded 1957) after the merger of the State Building Fund and the Workers' Building Fund.^[1]

The HFF was substantially impacted by the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis. In order to ensure that the HFF would remain solvent, the Icelandic government injected ISK 33 billion (2.1% of 2010 GDP) at the end of 2010, under a restructuring plan approved by the European Free Trade Association Surveillance Authority (EFTA).^[2]

Notes and References

http://www.ils.is/english/about-hff/ About HFF
OECD Economic Surveys: Iceland 2011 -OECD - 2011 Page 50 "The Housing Finance Fund (cont.).. The increasing difficulties that many households have had in paying their mortgages since the financial crisis struck have necessitated substantial debt restructuring, eroding the HFF's capital. Including debt write-downs associated with the December 2010 agreement between the government and the main mortgage loan providers to reduce the value of certain mortgages to 110% of the value of the underlying property, impaired impaired loans soared from ISK 3.4 billion (0.4% of the HFF's loan portfolio) in 2009 to ISK 38.8 billion (5.2% of the loan portfolio) in 2010. To ensure that the HFF remained solvent, the government made a capital injection of ISK 33 billion (2.1% of 2010 GDP) at the end of 2010. The European Surveillance Authority recently approved this state ..."