The state-owned Real Estate Agency (APN) has received bids from 12 commercial banks to participate in the government subsidised housing loans scheme, with the maximum effective interest rates offered ranging between 3.12% and 3.75%, APN said on Friday after opening the bids.

The call for bids was open from 15 February until today.

Once APN concludes contracts with credit institutions, it will publish the list of banks that will provide subsidised mortgages. The announcement of the selected banks is expected on 3 March.

After that, applications may be submitted by people under the age of 45 who do not own a house or an apartment. Their housing loans will be subsidised for the first five years of the loan repayment period.

This year, the government expects about 5,800 applications and has set aside €9.3 million for this scheme.

Properties to be subsidised must not cost more than 1,500 euro per square metre. The final price of the mortgage can be higher but the difference in price will not be eligible for subsidy.

The maximum amount of the loan that will be subsidised must not exceed €100,000 and the repayment period has to be at least 15 years.

The scheme enables subsidisation for the first five years of the loan servicing, when up to a half of the total amount of a monthly installment of the beneficiaries can be covered by this scheme.

The eligibility criteria for applicants require that they are under 45 years old and are first-home buyers. Calculating the amount of subsidy depends on the location of the property covered by the scheme. Applicants for properties in underdeveloped and rural areas qualify for higher subsidisation.

Last round of APN loans

Since 2017, when the first round of this scheme was conducted, the APN has conducted seven rounds of the scheme, and the eighth one, which is under way, is likely to be the last one.

Under this scheme, roughly 27,500 subsidised housing loans have been approved to date.

One of the benefits of the loan is that the subsidisation is extended by two more years for each child born or adopted into the family beneficiary of the scheme in the first five years of the loan servicing.

In the families that use housing loan subsidies, roughly 5,000 children have been born since 2017 and 13,130 children under 18 have been reported in the loan applications, according to the results presented in mid-2022.