Subsidized housing loans
extended to place of origin

Total number of loans

to exceed 5,000 in 2017

Loans by The Public Corporation for Housing (PCH), normally issued exclusively on primary residences, have become available for dwellings in one’s native location, as per the borrower’s identification papers.

People residing in Beirut or other cities will be eligible for a loan from the PCH to own a house in their home town provided their current residential unit has not benefited from a PCH loan, according to Rony Lahoud, the Chairman of PCH.

He said that this expansion of the regulations aims to encourage people to remain rooted in their villages.

PCH will also extend its loans to expatriates to encourage them to buy houses in their home country on condition that they do not rent them out.

The PCH loan ceiling is set at LL270 million ($180,000). The corporation provides on average 5,000 loans each year with a total value of LL1,000 billion ($667 million).

Lahoud said that the number of loans is expected to exceed 5,000 in 2017. He said that PCH has so far enabled at least 76,000 families to own their dwellings. The size of the average loan has increased over the last four years at an annual rate of LL2-3 million.

The maximum household income of the applicant should be less than ten times the minimum wage and the area of the residential unit must be less than 200 m2. The interest rate charged on the PCH loans is subsidized and is currently at 3.74 percent.

“The actual rate is around two percent because PCH pays the interest on behalf of the borrowers in the first 15 years of the loan’s tenure,” Lahoud said.