Public sales of Mr Fluffy blocks have cleared $500 million dollars, and the sell-off of the rest will be brought in-house as the loose-fill asbestos buyback and demolition program gets closer to completion.
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With the bulk of the sales program now completed, and the sales agent contract ending on January 1, the management of the remaining blocks has been transferred in-house to be managed by the Asbestos Response Taskforce and the Suburban Land Agency, the taskforce's latest report indicates.
Sales will be done on a "much smaller scale, as blocks become available" as the final phase of the Mr Fluffy scheme reaches its pointy end.
Of the 1023 affected or impacted Mr Fluffy homes, only 66 properties remain standing, the most recent version of the register shows. Only 20 of those are owned by the territory, with the rest in private hands.
Of the 866 blocks that have been taken to market, 775 have now been sold to public, worth $504 million.
The ACT government made $51 million in the six months to December alone, from the sale of 86 blocks.
Under the original deal, the territory was to pay back 70 per cent of the $1 billion concessional loan from the Commonwealth by selling off cleared blocks of land.
To meet that goal, and when taking into account sales to former owners and to government, they'll have to bring in more than $156 million.
Around $263 million of the total sales made so far have been through public auctions, $216 million from over-the-counter sales and $25 million by negotiation.
However, over-the-counter sales have now overtaken the number of blocks sold at auction; 375 were sold over the counter compared with 358 at auction.
The average cost of a block at auction was $735,570 compared with $576,685.
However the price for properties remaining over-the-counter is approximately $797,588.
Only 45 sites have sold to their original owners, under the first-right of-refusal program. Total first-right-of-refusal sales are at $36.4 million
As of December 31, 633 first-right-of-refusal offers have been sent. Of these, 258 offers were declined and 278 offers forfeited. Sixteen of those declined or forfeited offers occurred in the six months to December.
The total value of the buyback is now $687 million and the government purchase of 960 properties have been settled.
The demolition bill is at $84.5 million, although the average cost of demolition has fallen to $89,365 per property.
Another 10 properties were knocked down in the six months to December, making the total of demolished properties 946.
With the bulk of demolitions complete, the focus now is on knocking down properties deemed to be complex, such as shared garages, duplexes and dual occupancies.
More than half of the 53 complex properties have been knocked down, and the focus of early 2019 will be demolishing the territory-owned dual occupancies.
However, homeowners who want to demolish privately will have to bear the cost of disposing of rubbish themselves from July 1.
It comes as the ACT government plans to progressively close the West Belconnen tip, where most of the contaminated rubble has been dumped.
The scheme is formally due to end next year, although some will find it hard to gain closure until there is an inquiry into the affair.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr rejected a board of inquiry - the ACT's version of a royal commission - in 2016 because it required federal government cooperation to access documents and information from before self-government in 1989.
However Greens minister Shane Rattenbury at the time said he would push for a lower level inquiry before 2020.
