Orbán declares ‘now or never’ for young homebuyers: is a loan really the only way?

Demand for the Home Start programme, a new government-subsidised loan programme for young home-buyers, exceeds all expectations, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Thursday, adding: “Young people have understood that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase their own home.”

“Now or never,” Orbán said in a post on Facebook. “Banks are competing with each other, rents are down, the haters are silent. We have promised to benefit even those who voted against us. We have kept our word,” he said.

Taxes should be cut rather than raised, he said. “In a world-wide first,” mothers of three will receive a life-long personal income tax exemption from October. “This is the future, we can do even this,” he added.

He said tax hikes by the opposition Tisza party “should be fought against at all cost — an entire country revolted against that”. Tisza’s programme could be summed up as: “We can’t say everything because we’d fail,” the prime minsister said.

Tisza was “full of confusion and gibberish: three-bracket progressive personal income tax, energy price hikes, then they walk back from even a VAT cut. Total inability to govern…” he said. “Meanwhile, the government is implementing, step by step, the largest family-friendly tax cut in Hungarian history, and its largest home purchase programme,” he said.

Orbán said Tisza was “preparing full-tilt for their jamboree in Kotcse”, referring to a planned demonstration in a village hosting a traditional meeting of the ruling Fidesz party over the weekend. “No matter the provocation, we will hold our annual, peaceful, civic meeting,” he said, adding that the event will be streamed live.

Orbán noted that Andrej Babis, the leader of the Czech opposition ANO party, was discharged from the hospital today after he was hit on the head several times with a crutch at a campaign event. Babis had been the “second victim of the aggressive pro-Brussels and pro-Ukrainian scandal politics,” after Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, he said.

He insisted that the Tisza party “wants Hungary to be the third. We will not allow that, we will protect the peace and security of Hungary!”

Meanwhile, Orbán hailed the homecoming of EU affairs minister Janos Boka from Poland “with the best possible news from the country’s president. We will start rebuilding Hungarian-Polish cooperation. Fico is standing strong, Babis is standing at the gates. The V4 could restart in January,” he said.

“We are fighting for justice and against lies! 220 days to go,” he said, referring to the 2026 elections.

Obviously, Orbán’s words about the “Tisza tax hike” are not true. Read our report on the Tisza Party’s tax program HERE.

Read also:

• Hungary’s Péter Magyar unveils tax program: lower burdens for workers, wealth tax on the richest
• Will Péter Magyar’s Tisza increase the PIT in Hungary?