Catalonia will finance 20% of the entry into an apartment for young people without repaying the capital until the end of the loan

2024-10-15 15:02:00

The Government will open one credit line through the Catalan Institute of Finance (ICF) so that young people can count on it 20% entrance fee. necessary to acquire a second-hand house as a habitual residence through a public emancipation fund which will subsidize interest rates. During the life of the loan for entry, the beneficiaries, whose age limit will be established between the ages of 30 and 35only interest will have to be paid and the capital will have to be returned only at the end of the period or if it is sold before this. They are planned 500 million (100 million per year) in five years for approximately 12,000 homes that will have a low price. The instrument will be an emancipation fund that will set up a stock exchange through the purchase of second-hand houses with family income requirementsm2 and price similar to those of protected homes (VPO).

In turn, 500 million will be reserved to finance the difference between the cost of the work and the rent attract developers and builders to build affordable or social housing. It is estimated that the gap between the construction price and the rental fee, although highly variable depending on the area, It is located at a mitjana of 20% and this variable usually slows down the potential investors it is expected to attract. 500 million in aid is also expected for up to 100 thousand vulnerable families.

These measures are included in the emergency plan to promote the provision of sheltered housing, focusing on affordable rentals, approved by the Executive Council on Tuesday and which hinges on the mobilization and reservation of land for social housing, doubling the resources allocated for these purposes. AND speed up processing times. In this ‘package’ with which the Government aims to accelerate social housing, one will also be regulated new basic license which allows you to start carrying out work or renovations and earn up to 12 months in official protection accommodation (VPO) while your planning license is processed. With all this, the Catalan executive hopes to have at least some 20,000 homes of this type between 2027 and 2028, at the end of the legislature, at affordable prices out of the total 50,000 expected in 2030.

The Government is still collecting information on all the lots that can be dedicated to these measures and which fall within the strategy announced by the president Salvador Illa; with an endowment greater than 1.1 billion euros per year4,400 total in the legislature. This is an allocation that doubles that existing so far, according to sources in the Catalan Executive. Of this sum, 500 million per year will come from the ICF to finance public and private operators who build sheltered housing lots for rent or subsidized housing within the public reserve. If the owner, who will be registered in the land reserve for help, only has the plot, he will be helped to find a builder and if he already has one, he will be provided with financing from the ICF, according to Government sources.

Weight of social housing

It is expected to launch next February first call for guaranteed fee to 50 years of new construction of buildings defined as sheltered housing. One will be organized every year. Some municipalities have already shown interest in the initiative which aims to “recover the dynamic of concertation between the Generalitat and the municipal world”. In the Government’s view, this strategy achieved the maximum level of affordable housing production during the Executives of Pasquale Maragall I José Montillawith almost 7,000 homes completed in 2010. The burden of social housing could increase approximately 2.5% of the current total at 5 or 6%, according to official sources.

In turn, the Catalan Executive, under the direction of the Minister of Territory, Silvia Panequeit is proposed to implement regulatory changes so that Municipalities can mobilize lots of equipment to allocate them to subsidized accommodation for groups with difficulty accessing housingas well as accelerating the transformation of residential land intended for official protection housing (VPO). In addition to intensifying the direct promotion of rental VPOs, Incasòl will have the task of implementing one annual tender for the guaranteed purchase of properties work again qualified as sheltered accommodation.

New typology of protected housing

One of the planned legislative changes consists in the creation of a new type of protected housing called “limited price accommodation“. Another legal change concerns the procedures through the regulation of a basic licensing system to accelerate the promotion of VPO which allows the start of new facilities or rehabilitation works while the planning license is being processed. According to Government calculations, this initiative can shorten procedures by an average of 10 months reduce delivery times of homes by 50% compared to the current moment. If 100 months currently pass from the authorization for the construction of public housing to the delivery of the keys to the beneficiaries, the objective is to do so in 50 months on average. One of the initiatives to facilitate better agility will be to create an office between departments participating in land transformation.

The Government has converted the housing in one of his big bets with the aim of alleviate the consequences of the gap existing between family incomes and prices. According to the Housing Observatory, from 2000 to 2022, the average income of Catalans increased by 57.7%; while the average price of new construction increased by 171.9% in the same period; used, 122.9% and rental, 114.2%.

And why the essential bet on rent? Because according to the survey on living conditions, over the last twenty years the percentage of families renting has grown by more than 10 points, exceeding 30% of the total number of main homes. And another data from the Observatory on Emancipation of the Spanish Youth Council: only 20.2% of people between 16 and 29 years old live in Catalonia they live outside the family home and 80% of emancipated people share an apartment and tend to allocate a very high percentage of their income to housing expenses.

And according to Idescat, over the next 25 years, the number of families in Catalonia will increase from almost 3.2 million to 3.7 million, half a million more. In recent years, almost no sheltered housing has been built. On average, between 2014 and 2023, only 1,230 were completed per year. This contrasts with the more than 90,000 people who have signed up to the VPO claimant register.