Property developers promote their wares at the 45th House and Condo Show held at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center. (Photo: Varuth Hirunyatheb)

The government's real estate stimulus measures have already injected about 65 billion baht into the economy, according to the Finance Ministry.

Deputy Finance Minister Paopoom Rojanasakul said the government's real estate stimulus measures, which were introduced in early April, will expire at the end of this year.

On April 9, the cabinet approved a raft of property stimulus measures, including new cuts to the transfer fee and raising the limit for home and condo prices eligible for the transfer and mortgage registration fee benefits to 7 million baht, up from the current level of less than 3 million.

The measures include reducing the transfer fee from 2% to 0.01% of the transaction value and slashing the mortgage registration fee from 1% to 0.01% of the transaction value.

The measures apply to the sale of residential properties such as single houses, duplexes, townhouses, commercial buildings, land with buildings, and condominium units, with a purchase price and assessed property value not exceeding 7 million baht.

The mortgage amount must not exceed 7 million baht per contract.

To qualify for similar current reductions of the transfer and registration fees, units must not exceed 3 million baht in value.

Mr Paopoom said there have been 40,372 users of the benefits under the measure. This includes 29,047 for property transfers and 11,325 for condominium transfers, as of May 31.

For the measure to promote housing activities for low-income earners under which property developers have been exempted from corporate income tax for three years for building housing for individuals at a price not exceeding 1.5 million baht (including land costs), the total project value tallied 33.2 billion baht as of June 10.

For the Happy Home loan scheme, carrying a budget of 20 billion baht to provide loans to low or middle-income earners who want to own a house priced 3 million baht or less, a total of 12,576 loans have been approved amounting to 17.8 billion baht, making up 89.1% of the project's total funds.

Some 8,141 people have been approved for the Happy Life loan programme, which seeks to provide loans to the public to own a house or to refinance a mortgage from another financial institution.

The loan approvals total 15.6 billion baht, 77.9% of the project's total funds.

The scheme offers an average interest rate for the first three years at 2.98% per year, with loans of 2.5 million baht or more per person.