The Government’s so-called bad bank may be able to sell UK assets being taken over faster than domestic loans as the property market there recovers faster, its interim head said.

About “27pc of our assets are based overseas, mainly in the UK, and we would expect these markets to recover more quickly,” Brendan McDonagh, interim chief executive officer of the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) said at a conference in Dublin today. “We would envisage that this part of NAMA portfolio can be realized quickly.”

About 21pc of the loans the agency will take over as part of a bank-rescue plan by the Government are based in the UK excluding the North, according to NAMA’s business plan.

While property prices in Ireland will continue to decline through 2010, there are signs that the UK housing market may be starting to level off.

NAMA is buying property loans with book value of €77bn from three banks and two building societies at an average discount of 30pc. McDonagh said that while NAMA will be set up within the next two weeks, the transfer of loans may not start until the end of January.

About €16bn of the loans are in the UK. NAMA will also take over loans in the US, Germany, Italy, France and the Czech Republic.

Nationwide Building Society’s UK index on December 1 may show a 2.4pc annual increase in home values for November, according to the median forecast of 13 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Prices were unchanged in the year in October.

Source: www.independent.ie