Message of New Housing Loan Is to Help People Get Their First Home

The most important message of the Home Start Program is to help young people get their first home. To achieve that, the government provides a fixed 3%, 25-year loan option with government subsidy – said the Minister of Culture and Innovation at a press conference in Budapest on Tuesday following the meeting of the Housing and Real Estate Market Advisory Board.

Balázs Hankó added that the program, available from September, is important because young people are increasingly thinking about

having their own home first and then moving towards starting a family.”

He highlighted that Hungarians like to live in their own homes, as shown by a European survey, according to which 9 out of 10 Hungarians consider having their own home to be of paramount importance.

Much progress has been made in this area in recent years, as 270 thousand families have acquired their own apartments or houses thanks to the CSOK and CSOK+ loans ( a non-refundable subsidy for purchasing or building a new home, or renovating a house) – the minister explained.

Miklós Panyi, Parliamentary and Strategic State Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office, said that the board meeting will be attended by members of the banking association, large real estate developers, brokers and government officials.

The new Home Start loan is innovative in several respects: it is not tied to having children or marriage, but an important condition is that it should be the person’s first home acquisition.

He listed the second point as the fact that the 3% preferential interest rate allows for a much lower repayment installment compared to the loans currently available on the market. In the third point, he emphasized that because this repayment installment is low, people can have access to a greater amount of money, allowing them to consider purchasing a larger property.

Sándor Scheer, Balázs Hankó and Miklós Panyi (L-R) after the meeting of the Housing and Real Estate Market Advisory Board. (Photo: MTI/Hegedüs Róbert)

They are working to revitalize the construction industry, to start building properties, and thus to create apartments on the Hungarian real estate market that will be accessible to young people, the state secretary said.

Sándor Scheer, president of the Housing and Real Estate Market Advisory Board, said that the construction industry is ready to participate in the program, and there is capacity for that as well. New buyers are stimulating the housing market, and the stimulation of the construction industry and its secondary effects affect the operation of the entire economy.

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