The Generalitat de Catalunya will launch on June 30 a new line of financial aid aimed at facilitating access to housing for young people up to 35 years of age.
Under the name of Préstecs Emancipació, the program will allow to cover up to 20% of the value of a first property, with a limit of 50,000 euros, without interest and with a grace period of up to 30 years.
The measure has been presented this Tuesday by the councilors of Economy and Finance, Alícia Romero, and Territory, Housing and Ecological Transition, Sílvia Paneque.
“The program allows those who can take on a mortgage but do not have the initial savings to take the step of buying their first home,” said Romero. Repayment of the loan will begin once the mortgage payment is completed, and can be made over a period of up to five additional years.
The remaining 80% of the price of the property will be financed through mortgages granted by the banks that have joined the program, including CaixaBank, BBVA, Sabadell, Bankinter, LABORAL Kutxa and Caixa d’Enginyers, among others. Work is also underway to incorporate Banco Santander before the start of applications.
The Generalitat will allocate 500 million euros to the program during the period 2025-2029, at a rate of 100 million per year. The resources will be channeled through the Agència de l’Habitatge de Catalunya, and the Institut Català de Finances (ICF) will be in charge of managing the loans.
An outstanding feature of the program is that the homes acquired through this formula will be permanently classified as subsidized housing (HPO). This means that, if the property is to be sold in the future, the price will be limited to the purchase price updated for inflation and the cost of certain renovations, in order to preserve its affordability.
Loan eligibility requirements
Among the conditions of the loan released by the Generalitat de Catalunya this Tuesday, we find the following requirements.
- Applicants must be between 18 and 35 years old and registered in Catalonia.
- The acquired property must be the buyer’s first home and habitual residence.
- A gross annual income limit is established for the set of people residing in the property, set at 6.5 times the Indicador de Renta de Suficiencia de Catalunya (IRSC). For example, an individual buyer may not exceed 80,963.31 euros per year, and in the case of two people, the threshold will be 83,467.33 euros.
Applications can be made from June 30 through the website of the Institut Català de Finances (ICF). Once the loan has been approved, the beneficiaries must go to one of the collaborating financial entities to formalize the corresponding mortgage.