State guarantees are available for anyone building a detached home, or taking out a loan to buy an owner-occupied house. Banks grant the guarantee as part of the housing loan, without a separate application process.
The apartment must be used as the primary home of the borrower, or of a member of their family.
State-guaranteed owner-occupied housing loans may cover a maximum of 85% of the total purchase price of the apartment (90% in case of ASP interest subsidy loans). The State-guaranteed amount may cover a maximum of 20% of the owner-occupied housing loan (25% in case of ASP interest subsidy loans), but never more than EUR 50,000 per apartment. The guarantee may be granted for a maximum loan period of 25 years.
A fee of 2.5% of the amount of the loan is paid by the borrower at the withdrawal of the loan sum or the first instalment. If the loan is covered by the State’s interest subsidy scheme, the guarantee fee is not charged.
State guarantee when changing apartments
If the borrower has an existing State-guaranteed loan when changing apartments, it is possible to use the old loan for purchasing the new apartment and take a new loan to cover for the difference between the apartments’ purchase prices.
In these cases, the old housing loan is also counted as an owner-occupied housing loan used for purchasing the new apartment. This means that the borrower is granted a guarantee for the entire loan needed for purchasing the new apartment.
The condition is that the borrower must also pay the guarantee fee for the part of the old loan counted as the owner-occupied housing loan. The maximum share of owner-occupied housing loan of the total of the old and new loans is 85% of the purchase price of the new apartment (90% in case of ASP interest subsidy loans).
More information
Guidance/application:State Treasury, interest subsidy unit: t + 358 (0) 259 502 248
Regulations: Senior Adviser Jorma Pietiläinen, The Ministry of the Environment, t. + 358 (0) 295 250 228 firstname.lastname@ymparisto.fi