New Rent and Home Loan Support Scheme Published

A new emergency family support regime for rent and installment payments, as well as a loan agreement, known as “More Housing”, was published this Wednesday in the official gazette and will enter into force on Thursday.

The measures are aimed at helping families with severe financial difficulties cope with rising interest rates on Euribor-indexed floating-rate housing loans, in addition to measures to support rent.

“The Government, aware of the current geopolitical and geo-economic context, which has led to the highest inflation in recent years and therefore the cost of living, is approving a new set of more immediate responses to address the economic impacts mentioned. have a direct impact on household income and access to housing,” the government justifies in the diploma.

In this regard, the new regime provides that tenants with taxable income up to €38,632 (IRS 6th scale) and an effort ratio equal to or greater than 35% are now eligible for a monthly allowance of up to €200 payable on the 20th date of each month with retroactive effect until January 1 and will be valid for five years, until the end of 2028.

With regard to the loan, the executive clarifies that the measures are intended to “mitigate the risk of default” arising from the impact of the increase in the underlying indices in loan agreements, namely by virtue of the effort rate establishing the set of procedures for monitoring, evaluation and, published this Wednesday, under certain conditions, submission of customer offers.

In this regard, support is being created for borrowers of loan agreements for the purchase or construction of permanent housing in the form of subsidizing temporary interest when a certain threshold is exceeded.

Finally, the regime specifies that when a loan agreement is for the purchase or construction of a permanent home, the bank must allow the consumer to choose a variable, fixed, or mixed rate option.

“Through these measures, with the specific aim of protecting families and increasing their disposable income, deepens the national goal of providing decent housing for all,” the executive branch said.

The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who promulgated this diploma on Tuesday, the day before, during a visit to the premises CMTVargued that the government housing package, in a global sense, “as it was designed from the beginning, does not work at both the point of departure and the point of arrival.”

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa equated the package of measures announced by the government with “the so-called poster laws”, which “as if proclaim some more pamphlet program principles, but the point is not really that they are put into practice, no, that they remain poster laws.”