Expert-Grup

Prima Casă Plus: a social, banking, real estate or electoral programme? Analysis of the programme’s opportunities and risks

Sectorul financiarProtecția socialăWednesday, 24 July 20246338 views
Project:
Strengthening the Monitoring Capacity of Civil Society in Moldova

Automatically translated summary. The full text is available in Romanian.

Independent Think Tank “Expert-Grup” analyses the “Prima Casă” state programme in Moldova, launched in 2018 to help young families buy homes through state-guaranteed mortgages, and the government’s draft law “Prima Casă Plus”, which aims to revive the stalled programme. The note covers results, provisions, benefits and risks.

Since March 2018 to December 2023, the programme facilitated loans of MDL 4.45 billion for 8,153 beneficiaries, with state guarantees of MDL 2.23 billion. Its market share peaked in 2019, when almost every second leu of bank property loans went through it. It then fell to 13.4% in 2022 and 1.1% in 2023, owing to tighter monetary policy and rising apartment prices that left the MDL 1 million price cap outdated.

Chișinău apartment sales reached a record 24.4 thousand in 2021, then dropped to 14.4 thousand before recovering to 15.2 thousand in 2023. Prices kept rising even as transactions fell, driven also by limited supply, the concentration of activity in Chișinău and investor demand. The government’s “Prima Casă Plus” draft law was approved on 17 July and passed Parliament’s first reading on 18 July.

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