Real estate prices increased because of “Safe Credit”? Minister Buda sees no connection
Waldemar Buda maintains that there is no connection between the “Safe Credit 2%” program. and rising housing prices. – Flats have been getting more expensive since 1991 and nothing has changed here. There are not only people on the market who use loans with a subsidy. People who abandoned it in 2022 will return to the plan to buy an apartment – he says.
– More than half of those applying for a “2 percent loan”. they are singles who buy what is available, not the apartment they would like. It is rather an investment purchase only because a cheap loan is available – said Jacek Furga, chairman of the Residential Property Financing Committee of the Polish Bank Association, author of the AMRON reports, in an interview with Interia.
AMRON: prices increased by 4-5 percent.
He added that the age of applicants is usually between 25 and 35 years old, well below the limit in the Act. – This shows that it is probably a joint idea of the applicant and his family, which is able to use this apartment in the long term as an investment element financed with a cheap loan with state funding – he added.
In his opinion, “already the first quarter, on the wave of announcements of the program, brought slight increases and it is not true what Minister Buda says that prices were falling then, because they were not falling, and as the report to be published soon will show, in the second quarter alone the price increases reached 4 -5 percent.” – Such quarterly increases in housing prices have not been seen for years – summed up Jacek Furga.
We write about the AMRON report here.
Waldemar Buda does not believe that prices have increased due to the Safe Credit 2 percent.
The Minister of Development, Waldemar Buda, was asked to comment on these conclusions in Program One of Polish Radio, whose ministry prepared regulations on loans with a subsidy.
According to the minister, it cannot be said that half of the applicants are single, because the regulations provide that only married couples can take out a loan together, “and often these are informal couples in which one takes a loan”.
He also sees no connection between the program and rising property prices.
– Flats have been getting more expensive since 1991 and nothing has changed here. There are not only people on the market who use loans with a subsidy. People who abandoned it in 2022 will return to the plan to buy an apartment. They returned to the market, bought a second flat, changed it (…) It is hard to expect that since the prices of all products are rising, flats will not become more expensive. I hope that the second half of the year will be calmer – he added, explaining that whoever was supposed to take a loan with a subsidy will take it in the first weeks of the program.
Already in the previous months, the minister argued that the program – due to its limited nature (the subsidy can be obtained only for the purchase of the first apartment, there are price ranges for purchased properties) will not have a large impact on the market.
– Annually, approx. 230,000 sqm are built in Poland. flats. About 30,000 will go to the program, so it will not increase prices. Today, there are no buyers for flats, developers are phasing out construction projects. If someone says that prices will increase, they do not understand this market and they should update their knowledge, the minister said in March in “Sygnały Dnia”. – We are worried that developers will not limit construction projects due to the demand problem.
