New loan scheme supports property purchase in Hungary
Starting from September 2025, a new, 3% loan scheme will become available to those who want to purchase a house or an apartment for the first time. The new scheme will be available with way fewer restrictions than existing loans, aiming to support a wider population, with a possible impact on the real estate market as a whole.
Who can apply for the new loan?
Unlike with the CSOK and Babaváró loan schemes, there are no additional requirements regarding age or marital status. The new loan scheme called Otthon Start is available to every natural person who is buying residential real estate for the first time. You can even apply if you have been a co-owner of residential property before, as long as your share was not more than 50%.
The one real requirement regarding the applicant is that they need to have been enrolled in the Hungarian social security system for at least 2 years before application.
Mind you, if you are not a Hungarian citizen, you will probably be granted a loan only if you have a Hungarian address card (the plastic one, not just the QR code), which is available to permanent residents and EU nationals. Other conditions might apply.
What types of residential property qualify?
Again, the Otthon Start loan scheme lets you choose from a wider range of residential property than other government-backed loan schemes. The property can be either newly built or not, and it can be either in a highly populated town or in the countryside. However, there are some restrictions:
- The price of the property can be at most HUF 100 million (ca. EUR 250,000)
- The price per square meter can be at most HUF 1.5 million (ca. EUR 3,700)
Otthon Start loan from September
The Otthon Start loan will first become available from September 2025, and it will offer a very attractive loan scheme.
- Interest rate: 3%
- Maturity: at most 25 years
- Loan: at most HUF 50 million (ca. EUR 125,000)
- Own contribution: at least 10%
Since real estate loans on the market currently offer interest rates around 6.5%, the new loan scheme is obviously more favorable. For example, if you consider a loan of HUF 20 million (ca. EUR 50,000) with a maturity of 20 years, you can expect the following:
| Standard Loan | Otthon Start | |
| Interest rate | 6.5% | 3% |
| Own contribution | At least 20% | At least 10% |
| Monthly repayment | HUF 149,115 | HUF 110,920 |
| Total repayment | HUF 35,787,511 | HUF 26,620,685 |
Additionally, the Otthon Start loan scheme is supposed to be possible to be combined with CSOK and Babaváró. As a result, you can achieve even more favorable conditions when applying for a real estate loan.
Expected impact on the Hungarian real estate market
As it is obvious from the above example, the new 3% government-backed loan scheme offers various benefits. Since both the monthly and the total repayments are lower than in the case of a standard real estate loan, buyers can decide if they will simply take advantage of a lower monthly financial burden than originally planned (before the Otthon Start loan was announced), or go find a more expensive, but probably more comfortable home for themselves and pay the monthly instalments they originally planned.
Since the expected own contribution is also significantly lower for the Otthon Start loan than in market-based schemes (at least 10% vs. 20%), new participants may enter the real estate market: people who had no chance for receiving a loan for lack of sufficient savings. This, however, may contribute to the increase of prices.
At the same time, financial analysts are worried that the availability of the new loan scheme might increase real estate prices across the board, the way it happened when CSOK was first introduced. Only time will tell if that will be the case. If that happens, people who are looking to buy not their first home will feel a serious disadvantage.
Helpers Finance at your service
Regardless of the developments of the real estate market, the Helpers Finance team remains your ally in matters of accounting and finance. We focus on supporting small and medium-sized businesses in Hungary, working mostly with foreign owners. Thanks to our precise accountancy, payroll, and HR services, you can freely focus on growing your business while we take care of compliance. Should you have any questions, we are always here to help.
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