Start of 'First Home 4'. What's new this time around?

Bankers are getting ready to resume sale of mortgage loans through the ‘First Home’ scheme in a few days from now, after the enforcement guidelines of the fourth iteration of the scheme have been published in the Official Gazette. They are now conducting talks over the guarantee agreement that has to be signed with the state’s representatives.

“It’s a matter of days from the moment all the necessary papers have been signed with the representatives of the state until we can proceed with granting loans through the fourth iteration of the scheme,” say the representatives of Bancpost, one of the five banks that announced they were still interested in selling ‘First Home’ loans.

The government no longer allocated guarantees for this stage of the scheme, with interested banks set to cut their guarantees for the loans sold in the previous years to be able to keep granting 50% guaranteed loans. The law even allows transfer of portfolios between banks so that the players that have not been part of the scheme yet will be able to get guarantees from the state.

The halving of the state’s guarantee will allow banks to continue selling loans up to 1.5 billion euros, with the cap cumulated by the five lenders that have already announced they are interested to participate in the fourth iteration amounting to about one billion euros.