The government did not appreciate the “Safe 2% loan”. We are using the money for next year

The success of the “Safe 2% Credit” surprised even politicians who reserved an insufficient amount of money for the first months of the program. As of October 5, over 17.5 thousand have already been signed. contracts for a total amount of PLN 6.9 billion – according to the latest available data from the Ministry of Energy and Technology published by PAP. Moreover, we are talking about a time when banks joined the program, the final IT system for operation is still being created, and the procedures are only just getting stronger. The number of loan applications submitted so far is also impressive. As many as 63.6 thousand of them went to banks.

The government underestimated the scale of interest in the applications

– The problem is that the value of preferential loans granted today (PLN 6.9 billion) has more than doubled the plan for 2023. This was included in the Regulatory Impact Assessment attached to the draft act introducing the preferential loan program. According to this document, loans with a total value of PLN 3.2 billion were expected to be granted by the end of 2023. After only 3 months, we have already overcome this barrier more than twice and loans worth over PLN 1 billion are granted every week – writes Bartosz Turek, chief analyst at HRE Investment Trust, in the analysis.

This raises concerns that the money for subsidies will run out in the first days or weeks of 2024. It is true that, according to the Act, in 2023 BGK cannot announce the suspension of the recruitment of applications for preferential loans, but the money does not come out of nowhere.

The money earmarked for the next year has been released

In 2023, we use the budget planned for 2024. Pursuant to the applicable act, the government plans to spend PLN 941 million on loan subsidies. In the next year it is PLN 1,107 million. These numbers are important because, according to the Act, the acceptance of applications will have to be stopped when 90% of the funds allocated for a given year or 75% have been used. those budgeted for next year. This means that when the “subsidy counter” reaches just over PLN 830 million in 2024, BGK will announce the end of accepting applications. The ban will take effect the day after this announcement.

HREIT estimates also show that the contracts signed today may result in the need to spend approximately PLN 350-400 million from the budget for next year. This is almost half of the real spending limit planned for 2024.

The applications are still coming in

These are very disturbing numbers. Why? According to the Ministry of Energy and Technology, by October 5, 2023, Poles had submitted 63.6 thousand loan applications. In a conservative variant, there may be another 30,000 of them by the end of the year, but if there are enough apartments to buy and people willing to enter into transactions, there is nothing stopping banks from receiving as many documents from people wanting to get a cheap apartment by the end of the year. and easily accessible credit.

The number of loan applications is important because it is usually closely related to the number of loans actually granted. In the case of standard “mortgages”, approximately half of the applications result in the signing of an agreement. If the same happens in the case of “Safe 2% Loans”, the budget for subsidies for 2024 may even be fully exhausted already this year.

According to HREIT, the effect of 2023 may be as much as 40-60 thousand preferential loans. Assuming the extreme variant, i.e. a frenzy for debts with subsidies at the end of this year (60,000 loans), we will have more than used up the money allocated for subsidies in 2024 by the end of December. As a result, BGK will have to announce a ban on accepting applications as soon as it obtains all the necessary data, i.e. even in the first days of January 2024.