PN aid to first-time buyers will cost €37m per year, €2.8m in 2026

Aid promised to first-time property buyers by the Nationalist Party will cost an average of €37 million per year, the party said on Friday.

The figures were presented to journalists by PN candidate Joseph Grech at a press conference on Friday, one day after party leader Alex Borg said the pledges would cost €2.8 million annually. 

Grech presented calculations showing that the pledges would cost €10.5 million to implement in 2027, with that figure rising every year. By 2035, the aid will cost taxpayers €60.5 million per year, PN calculations showed.

In total, the PN expects its aid to first-time buyers to cost €333.5 million between 2027 and 2035 – an average of €37 million per year.

One day earlier, the PN leader told journalists that the party’s pledges would cost €2.8 million annually to implement.

That €2.8 million figure will only cover the cost of the pledges between September and December of this year, Grech's calculations showed.

Grech explained that the PN’s calculations are based on the assumption that first-time buyers bought properties costing an average of €250,000 and at an interest rate of 2.5%.

They calculate that around 2,500 new first-time buyers will enter the property market each year. All those buyers will qualify for the proposed aid, in the PN's calculations.  

What is the PN pledging?

Borg made two pledges to first-time property buyers during a rally in Qormi this week.

The first would see the government pay half of the interest payments on first-time-buyer mortgages for the first 10 years of the loan term.  

The second would significantly expand a scheme that provides grants to first-time buyers to help cover property deposit costs, making it applicable to properties that cost up to €450,000. Currently, the scheme applies only to properties costing €250,000 or less.

Borg’s first pledge immediately drew fire from Labour’s Clyde Caruana, who said the promise to cover 50% of interest payments would end up helping just 750 first-time buyers before the €2.8 million allocated to it ran out.

Speaking on Friday, Borg corrected his figures, saying the scheme would cost €2.8 million “in the first quarter”.

He added that under the PN’s calculations, around 900 first-time buyers would benefit from the party’s pledge in its first quarter of operation - from September to December of this year. 

“We intend to implement this scheme immediately, from August or September,” he said.

He criticised Labour media for having claimed that "just 3%" of first-time buyers stood to benefit from the scheme. Their numbers do not make sense, he said, saying "Clyde Caruana's calculator is not working".

PN candidate Grech said the average first-time buyer stood to save just over €3,000 a year through the two PN proposals for first-time buyers.

The PN is also pledging to exempt first-time buyers from paying stamp duty on the first €350,000 of a property’s value.

Other proposals

Friday’s press conference saw the PN highlight various other proposals it has made to target younger voters.

They include bumping up student stipends by 25% and depositing €1,000 a year for five years into a private pension plan for workers aged under 35, to help them start saving for retirement.

The PN is also promising to pay students who become parents while still in school the equivalent of the national minimum wage.

Its headling pledge during the event, however, is to grant young people entering the workforce five years of tax-free income, capped at €50,000 annually.