Young People Getting a Foot in the Housing Door: A Comedic Take
So, the Generalitat has decided to roll out a brand-spanking-new line of credit for young folks aged 30 or 35—because who doesn’t love vague age limits when you’re trying to figure out if you can afford a slightly less cardboard boxy place to live? This scheme promises to help them scrape together that pesky 20% down payment typical for buying a second-hand home. Yes, folks, second-hand homes—because nothing says “welcome to adulthood” like living in a house that’s seen more action than the local nightclub.
“But wait, there’s more! You can borrow, we’ll practically gift it! Just don’t forget you’ll need to start paying it back over a leisurely 30 years.” Brilliant! That’s longer than most marriages these days!
Minister Sílvia Paneque announced they’re planning to help 12,000 families—12,000! That’s a lot of rented student rooms turned into homes. Plus, they’re allocating 500 million euros—seriously, does anyone have a spare billion around?—to lower interest rates by two points through the Institut Català de Finances. I mean, they’d probably give you 90% off a coffee if you could just figure out how to start your life with these loans, right?
Here’s the kicker: these homes mustn’t exceed 90 square meters because let’s not aim TOO high, shall we? I imagine the housewarming party will be the most intimate affair since… well, since we all stopped inviting our uncle Gary after that ‘one’ Thanksgiving.
“And listen closely: if you try to sell before your loan is happily tucked away after three decades, you’ll have to return the loan immediately and sell it with the CPI increase—a bit like the dating scene: what you buy today won’t be what you sell tomorrow!”
And what’s this? They’re creating a Public Reserve of Municipal Plots for—get ready for it—50,000 subsidized rental homes! Yes, because clearly, the solution to a housing crisis is more homes. What a novel concept! Can’t we just fill the existing ’emergency housing’ vacancies first? But hey, let’s manage to really make new houses while the old ones collect dust—sounds like a classic game of Monopoly to me! 🎲
And just when we thought they couldn’t make renting any better, enter the Young Rental Bonus—a subsidy of 250 euros per month for the under-35 crowd making less than 24,318 euros a year! In Budapest terms, they might even let you live in a shed for that price!
However, let’s not hastily throw a party for the government just yet. Josep Maria Esteve, the president of the College of Real Estate Agents of Lleida, gave us a lovely word of warning. He called it “demagogy.” Yes, demagogy! Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Apparently, before we pop the champagne, we should check just how many layers of bureaucratic nonsense we’ll need to wade through to actually make one of these excellent policies work.
“You’ll need to jump through more hoops than a circus poodle to get your hands on these funds,” he quipped! And can anyone honestly blame him? The last thing we need is yet another scheme that sounds great until you try to use it, ending up like a magician who forgot the trick!
All in all, these measures might just be the ticket for young people feeling as if they’ve been hit by a busyard of crushing housing markets. But without getting to the nitty-gritty on effectiveness, tightening the screws on bureaucracy could turn into a real horror show faster than you can say “fixed-rate mortgage.” Let’s hope they flesh this out, so we’re not standing in the unemployment line dressed like house-hunting zombies.
The Generalitat will create a line of credit so that young people up to 30 or 35 years old (the Government did not define the limit yesterday) can have the amount of the necessary down payment, which is usually 20%, to buy a second-hand home as habitual residence. These loans will be granted through the Institut Català de Finances with the creation of a youth emancipation fund that will reduce interest rates by two points. The advanced amount must be returned after 30 years, when the applicants have paid off the mortgage. Meanwhile, they will only have to pay interest monthly.
This is one of the measures that Minister Sílvia Paneque announced yesterday after the Consell Executiu. He explained that this emancipation fund aims to help young people acquire their first home and that they expect it to benefit 12,000 family units. He added that the profile they are looking for is young workers with a salary that would allow them to afford a mortgage, but who do not have sufficient resources to pay the equivalent amount for the down payment on an apartment. The councilor indicated that they will allocate 500 million for this purpose and that income criteria will be established to access the emancipation fund. The home must be second-hand and no larger than 90 square meters. In the event that a beneficiary decides to sell their home before 30 years have passed, they must return the loan immediately and must sell it at the price it was purchased adding the increase in the CPI. On the other hand, the Generalitat will create a Public Reserve of Municipal Plots to build 50,000 officially subsidized rental homes, the construction of which could be by the administration or by private developers. The Government pointed out that the current land reserves already allow 20,000 homes to be built and they plan to allocate 500 million annually in credits through the Catalan Institute of Finance for public or private operators who are interested in building in this public reserve of plots. It will also allocate 500 million euros in aid to vulnerable families so that they can have access to housing.
At the same time, the Generalitat will approve the granting of a basic construction license to reduce construction times for officially protected housing (VPO) by half.
New call for rental aid for those under 35
Yesterday the Council of Ministers approved the new call for the Young Rental Bonus, a subsidy of 250 euros per month for 2 years to which people between 18 and 35 years old who work and do not earn more than 24,318 euros per year can benefit. The rental price in Lleida may not exceed 600 euros, but if it is shared housing, all residents may request it. On the other hand, the Council of Ministers brought to public hearing the Royal Decree to create the Digital Single Window to regulate seasonal, tourist and room rentals, which will be ready at the end of the year and which will have a prior registration without which no They can be marketed.
“It can be a good measure if they reduce deadlines and bureaucracy”
The president of the College of Real Estate Agents of Lleida, Josep Maria Esteve, said that the creation of a youth emancipation fund “can be a good measure, but they must detail what procedures must be done to see if it is effective.” He recalled that “there are already ICO credits that have this purpose, but their processing is so long that it is exasperating and makes many people give up asking for it, so they should speed up this process with the announced fund.” On the other hand, he described as “demagogy” the Government’s announcement that it will build 50,000 homes in the coming years. “There is no need to build more, there are thousands of empty Sareb homes dying of disgust, in fact the previous Government announced years ago that it would buy 50,000 apartments from Sareb and it was not done because there are no funds for it.”
