Coming soon: Hungary’s new home start credit scheme launches 1 September

Gergely Gulyás, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office, has confirmed the Sept 1 launch date for the Home Start subsidised credit scheme for first-time home buyers.

At a weekly press briefing on Monday, Gulyás said a decree on the details of combining the 3 percent fixed-rate credit with other home purchase subsidies will be published this evening.

He said the interest subsidy translated into monthly savings of 30,000 forints compared with market loans for every 10 million forints of credit taken out.

Borrowers may raise up to 50 million forints of Home Start credit with a 25 year maturity, with down payments on the loans set at 10 percent.

Gulyás said that around 15,000 home builds could start in 2025 and a “significant” part of those would be eligible for the Home Start credit. He added that the rules for the credit were sufficiently flexible while also safeguarding against inflation.

Public interest in the scheme appeared to be keen, he said, adding that negotiations with banks were ongoing. Banks knew that competition would be stiff and offers were likely to be even more favourable than the mandatory rules on the market, he said.

Real estate developers are also showing keen interest in the scheme, Gulyás said.

Investors will find it economically viable to build a condominium consisting of more than 250 properties where at least 70 percent of them meet the conditions of the programme, Gulyás said, adding that this year alone 15,000 real estate developments can be launched across the country, many of which will be available under Home Start.

The decree is also harmonised in terms of price caps, as it raises the price threshold for properties that can be purchased under the CSOK Plus family support scheme while also offering sufficient guarantees that commercial property prices will not be increased but actually curbed.

Gulyás: Government extends mandatory markup caps till end-November

Meanwhile, Gulyás said the government has decided to extend mandatory caps on a range of food and non-food products until Nov 30 with a view to keeping a lid on inflation.

The government rolled out a 10 percent cap on markups for food products and a 15 percent cap on the non-food products in the spring. The measure was set to expire on Aug 31.

Gulyás said “unjustified” price increases had no place on the “normal” market. He added that the ten food products with the biggest weights in the consumer basket affected by the measure would be 35 percent dearer without the cap on markups.

Regarding events in Ukraine, Gulyás said the government discussed the attacks on the Druzhba crude pipeline at the cabinet meeting on Thursday. He added that the prime minister’s and the foreign minister’s “firm warning” to Ukraine aimed to put a stop to the endangerment of the security of Hungary’s energy supply and attacks on Hungary’s energy transit route.

Gulyás noted that Hungary is the top supplier of electricity to Ukraine, adding that the country had shown Ukraine solidarity “from the first moments of the Russian attack”, mounting the biggest humanitarian action in Hungarian history while not only supporting Transcarpathia and Hungarians there but Ukraine as a whole, too.

Ukrainian attacks on pipeline infrastructure damaged Hungary and Slovakia, rather than Russia, he said, noting that the European Commission had committed in writing to taking action against attacks on pipelines supplying member states. “We expect Brussels to speak out on the matter,” he said.

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