Cyprus Mail reports that Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou said the Renovate-Rent housing scheme was underperforming relative to expectations after drawing only 84 applications so far. The programme had been set up to bring 1,000 housing units onto the market in two years, and it has used just €1.2 million of its €25 million budget.
Ioannou first raised the shortfall last February, after 920 property owners registered when the scheme was announced in 2024. That gap between registrations and completed applications now defines the problem for owners weighing whether to renovate vacant property and rent it out under the scheme’s terms.
Constantinos Ioannou and the target
The scheme is aimed at available housing that is not on the market, including houses or flats that are often inherited and left vacant while the new owner decides what to do with them. Under the model, property owners receive subsidy support to renovate those units, then commit to renting them out at a 30 per cent discount for four years.
The scale of the outcome is now clear in simple numbers. From an original target of 1,000 housing units in two years, the scheme has reached 84 applications, including rejected ones, and €1.2 million in subsidies. That leaves most of the €25 million budget untouched while the policy remains far short of its intended pace.
The Renovate rules changed
The second iteration is now accepting applications until the end of 2027, and its terms have been loosened. All subsidies were increased by €5,000, lifting the grant to €20,000 for a one-bedroom unit, €30,000 for a two-bedroom unit and €40,000 for a three-bedroom unit.
Eligibility also widened. The vacancy test based on power usage was relaxed from under 200kW a year to under 500kW, and a single person earning €30,000 a year or less can now apply, up from the previous €25,000 ceiling. The income threshold now rises to €70,000 a year for a family or single-parent household of five or more people.
Christos Zavallis and a vacant flat
Christos Zavallis renovated a one-bedroom flat that had been vacant for about 15 years through the scheme. His case shows the policy working where owners are ready to act, but the wider numbers show that the current terms still have to convert interest into actual applications.
The next step for applicants is straightforward: use the expanded rules before the end of 2027, or wait and see whether the higher subsidies and looser eligibility can move the scheme closer to its original target. For now, the unanswered issue is why the programme has drawn so few completed applications compared with the property owners who signed up in the first place.
