The days when renting was clearly cheaper than buying a home are quickly coming to an end. These days, monthly rent often matches or even exceeds what people would pay on a mortgage. And that shift is changing how households think about home ownership.
That’s the picture painted by Interior Minister Konstantinos Ioannou, who oversees the government’s housing programmes. Responding to a question in Parliament from DIKO MP Christos Senekis, the Minister said fewer displaced persons are now applying for rent subsidies, while more are turning to schemes that help them buy or build a home.
The numbers back this up. Applications for rent subsidies dropped from 4,509 in 2022 to 3,155 in 2024. At the same time, interest in home ownership has grown — something the Minister directly links to rising rental prices.
As Mr Ioannou explained, over the past three years there’s been a gradual decline in rent subsidy applications and a parallel rise in applications for home purchase or construction schemes. With rents climbing so sharply, many households are deciding it makes more sense to buy, since mortgage payments are often similar to what they’d pay in rent anyway.
In total, rent subsidy beneficiaries numbered 4,509 in 2022, 3,712 in 2023 and 3,155 in 2024. To ease some of the pressure, subsidy amounts were increased by about 15% as of 1 January 2024.
All of this highlights just how fast rental prices have risen — and why there’s growing pressure to strengthen state housing support aimed at home ownership.
The government is continuing to roll out the KtizO housing scheme for displaced persons, which is expected to cost around €130 million over its ten-year lifespan. Other housing programmes are also still in place. Since 2013, the number of people eligible for housing assistance has increased, after children of refugee mothers were officially recognised as refugees — expanding eligibility beyond paternal descent and bringing more households into the system.
Mr Senekis also raised another long-standing issue, asking whether the Ministry plans to revise the income criteria for the Rent Subsidy Scheme. As he pointed out, those thresholds have not been updated in more than 15 years.
In response, the Minister confirmed that the Welfare Service has already submitted a draft bill to the Legal Service for review. The proposed changes aim to modernise the rent subsidy framework and expand eligibility. Among other things, the bill would repeal certain provisions of the Rent Control Law related to subsidies for displaced persons and victims, create a dedicated Rent Subsidy Officer, introduce an appeals process, and update evaluation criteria.
Once the bill is approved, new income assessment methods and thresholds will be put before the Council of Ministers. The goal, Mr Ioannou said, is to make the scheme fairer and allow more people to qualify.
On the budget side, the Minister noted that rent subsidy funds were used at an average rate of over 90% between 2022 and 2024 — specifically 93.54% in 2022, 93.76% in 2023 and 85.39% in 2024.
Any unused funds don’t go to waste, he added. Instead, they’re redirected to other housing schemes for displaced persons, such as programmes for buying, building or repairing homes and flats. These schemes tend to be oversubscribed, meaning the state can approve more applications than originally planned.
