State Housing Development Fund of Slovakia
The State Housing Development Fund (SHDF) of Slovakia was established in 1996 as a revolving fund to finance the priorities of the Government of Slovakia defined in the State Housing Policy Concept. It is an independent entity supervised by the Ministry of Transport and Construction of the Slovak Republic.
Description
The Fund was originally financed exclusively from the state budget and was envisaged to become self-sustaining over time. The fund still draws on small levels of government funding, together with some European structural funding, but is now primarily self-sustaining via the repayments on the loans which it has made.
Actors involved
Štátny fond rozvoja bývania (SFRB)
Scale
National
More information
The SHDF provides long-term loans on favourable terms. These cover up to 100 per cent of housing acquisition costs and are available for terms of up to 40 years at interest rates of between zero and 2 per cent. The loans are available for the:
- Construction or purchase of dwellings by qualified households – available to people with a disability, families with young people and former residents of orphanages
- Renovation or modernization in multi-apartment buildings and family houses
- Construction or purchase of social rented dwellings by municipalities and non-profit organizations, and construction of for-profit rented housing by private companies
- Construction and refurbishment of social service facilities by municipalities or private companies
- Acquisition and servicing of land for social housing by municipalities and also land used by for-profit rented housing by private companies
- Acquisition of a lodging-houses by municipalities or by private companies.
SHDF has made a significant contribution to improving the supply and quality of housing in Slovakia. There was a serious shortage of good quality housing, particularly for low-income households, following transition of Slovakia in the early 1990s. This was due to low levels of new housing supply from the market and the privatization of the majority of rented dwellings, which had previously been owned by the state during the communist period.[1] Between its establishment and 2016, the fund supported the provision of 40,858 social housing units, which is one of the highest rates of new social housing output achieved in post-communist countries during that period.[2] Between its establishment and 2018, the SHDF has funded or co-funded the renovation of 25 per cent of the total Slovakian housing stock. Take-up of its loans by municipalities is helped by the fact that these are not included in general government debt.
SHDF is also significant in institutional terms and in terms of the housing finance expertise it can provide. Its extensive experience in financing housing meant that it was ideally placed to act as a special purpose financial intermediary to administer the EU JESSICA programme for energy-efficient renovation of dwellings when it was established in 2013.[3]
[1] UNECE, Country profiles on the housing sector: Slovakia (Geneva, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 1999). Available at https://unece.org/housing-and-land-management/publications/country-profiles-housing-sector-slovakia.
[2] Hegedüs, “Affordable Housing in Central and Eastern Europe”
[3] European Commission, European Construction Sector Observatory, “Slovak Republic”, Policy fact sheet State Housing Development Fund (September 2019). Available at https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/38344.
An initiative of:
