Market
Construction NPLs in Morocco
A building site is not a delivered home.
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- Serenor Capital
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- 2 min read
Construction concentrates delay, subcontracting and inventory risk. The security often cited — the development — may be a permit, a plot and unfinished floors. That is not the flat a home loan finances once it has been delivered.
Three different debtors
The developer carries inventory and the bridge or development loan. The contractor carries contracts, retention and subcontractors. The end-buyer of a delivered home carries a mortgage. All three can appear in one 'real-estate portfolio'. They do not share a curve.
Separating them is the first segmentation job. Home loans already have their own discussion inside secured books. The rest of this page is the developer and the contractor. See corporate NPL underwriting.
The site as security
A mortgage over a plot and works in progress is worth the land plus what a buyer will pay for the works, minus the cost of making them saleable, and subject to rank and site privileges. Buyers who have paid deposits complicate the chain of title.
Without a dated progress report and a registry extract, the memorandum's marketing price does not enter the base case. See collateral appraisal.
The contractor
The useful claim may be an unpaid public or private contract, not a building. Its value depends on the employer, retentions, assignments of receivables already made, and any insolvency proceeding. Insolvency changes the calendar as soon as a proceeding opens.
Site equipment is treated as specialised movables: present or absent. A pledge is not enough. The parallel with leasing NPLs is the method, not the contract.
Concentration
Construction books are often single names dressed as a portfolio: a few schemes carry the value. The granularity test applies before any curve. See granular portfolios.
No sector stock is quoted. The only verified aggregate to set beside it remains the monitor, all activities. A price that borrows the banks' 8.3% ratio, or a home-loan exit curve, to fill that gap is not a construction analysis.
In this series
- Corporate NPL underwriting
- Secured versus unsecured NPLs
- Tourism NPLs in Morocco
- Agricultural NPLs in Morocco
This note is a method of reading a file or a published series. It is not legal, tax or investment advice, and it is not an opinion on a particular exposure. Serenor Capital does not buy claims for its own account, manage a fund, or carry on collection.
Sources and references
- Bank Al-Maghrib, Annual Report on Banking Supervision, financial year 2025 — PDF
- Bank Al-Maghrib, Circular No. 19/G/2002 of 23 December 2002 on the classification of claims and their provisioning, as amended — PDF
- Circular No. 1/W/2025, adopted on 5 December 2025, effective 1 January 2027. It does not restate the 2012–2025 figures discussed here.
- Serenor public series, banks, social basis — Morocco NPL Monitor and methodology
Frequently asked questions
- Is a mortgaged scheme worth the sum of the listed sale prices?
- No. Marketing prices are prices of a scheme that finishes. A stopped site is valued as completion cost, time and discount, or as land, not as a sales grid.
- Does the banks' ratio include a construction ratio?
- The published 8.3% at end-2025 is not a construction ratio. No sector outstanding is invented in this note.
Evaluating an NPL Portfolio
Serenor Capital supports financial institutions and investors in the analysis and valuation of non-performing loan portfolios in Morocco.
Serenor Capital publishes research on non-performing loans, distressed-credit valuation and the development of Morocco’s secondary credit market.
This note is general commentary on method and market structure. It is not investment advice, legal advice, or a recommendation in relation to any portfolio, transaction or financial asset.