Luxembourg's 5,348 affordable homes 'under construction' can include finished ones, and no national count says how many

Does the ministry count finished affordable homes?

"The Housing Ministry has no statistics covering all completed affordable homes." That was Housing Minister Claude Meisch's written answer to parliamentary question 4398 on 17 July 2026 (our translation of "huet keng Statistiken iwwert all färdeggestalltee abordabele Wunnengen"). Deputy Ben Streff had asked how many affordable homes had been created in each commune over five years, and how many the communes had built themselves. The minister added that the ministry has no total number of affordable homes either. For completions, he gave only the figures of the two public developers that, in his words, build the most affordable homes in the country. He gave no figure for homes the communes built themselves.

Paperjam reported the gap on 6 July 2026, from an earlier government answer to LSAP deputies Mars Di Bartolomeo and Yves Cruchten, and its analysis of 2 July 2026 set out the record spending and the long delays before homes arrive. This page checks the official numbers against each other, against the previous year's report and against the subsidy law.

The money trail, stage by stage

The rows cannot be added up or divided into a "delivery rate": each has its own population and date.

What did the €474 million pay for?

The Ministry's 2 July 2026 release says €474 million went to affordable housing in 2025, against €224 million in 2024. Table 6.3 of the 2025 Fonds spécial report splits the €473.5 million paid: €375.2 million of Aides à la pierre (the State's share of projects by social developers, plus €6 million to private companies), €71.9 million for homes the State buys off-plan (VEFA) and €26.4 million under the Pacte Logement, the State's housing contract with communes. The Aides à la pierre total also includes the €73 million the State spent buying land itself.

The same table shows €740.9 million of new commitments in 2025 and €1,087.4 million still to be paid under signed agreements at 31 December 2025. The report forecasts spending of €476 million to €542 million a year from 2026 to 2029, peaking in 2027. Because a payment can go to land, planning, infrastructure or building, a year's payments cannot be matched to a year's finished homes.

Why are 5,348 conventioned homes not 5,348 finished homes?

A home is "conventioned" when the State signs an Aides à la pierre agreement to build or renovate it (a project can also receive separate agreements for land or roads). The minister says this happens once the project has reached at least the detailed design stage (avant-projet détaillé), so a building permit has been requested or granted, and such projects are "either under construction or shortly before the start of construction"; 98% are new builds.

The report's key-figures page describes the 5,348 homes as "en construction ou en rénovation" (under construction or renovation). Its own definition, though, says the inventory also holds "finished homes, occupied or not" whose final account has not been settled. A project leaves the inventory only when it is financially closed, after its developer hands in the final account; in 2025, 30 projects with 235 homes did so. As a result, the 5,348 can mix homes about to start, homes being built and finished homes, and the report never gives the split. The 235 closed homes are the only all-developer figure that normally comes after completion, and even that is an accounting step: it lags, and closed project codes can be reopened.

The pipeline total itself moved between editions. The 2024 report put it at 4,226 homes on 292 projects at 31 December 2024; the 2025 report restates that to 4,290, mainly because closed project codes were reactivated (the footnote giving that reason prints 3,935; see the methodology). The minister told Parliament that conventioned homes rose by 26.6%, close to the 26.55% (26.5% at one decimal) that 5,348 gives against the first-published 4,226; the report's own flows from the restated total give 24.7%. A growth figure for this pipeline therefore means little unless it names the edition it starts from.

How many affordable homes were finished in 2025?

The minister's figures come from the annual reports of the Fonds du Logement (the public housing developer and landlord) and SNHBM (the Société nationale des habitations à bon marché, the State-backed affordable-housing builder). In 2025 the two finished 404 homes (Fonds du Logement 116, SNHBM 288), against 245 in 2023, and had 2,562 homes "in realisation", the minister's term (Fonds du Logement 1,227, SNHBM 1,335), against 1,412 in 2023; the chart shows each year.

These two build two of every three conventioned homes, according to the report, so their figures relate to most of the pipeline, although their own annual reports may not count homes exactly as the inventory does. They leave a gap all the same: of the 1,293 homes conventioned in 2025, 710 were SNHBM's and 269 the Fonds du Logement's, while 208 were with non-profit developers and 106 with communes. Those 314 homes, about a quarter of the year's additions, are outside the only completion count the minister gave. Across the whole inventory, communes (876 homes in 127 projects) and non-profit developers (821 in 79) hold 1,697 of the 5,348 homes, about 32%, but 206 of the 351 projects. The report says about fifty developers carry these projects, most of them communes, and its own annex 9.1 names more; the completion figures cover two.

Annex 9.3 adds a stock count: 4,489 public rental homes at 1 January 2025 (1,468 owned by communes, 2,439 by the Fonds du Logement and 582 by SNHBM; 0.65 for every 100 inhabitants). Its commune count follows the definition used to share out municipal funding, and the total fell as well as rose over the four years shown (3,873, 4,117, 3,817, then 4,489), so its changes cannot be read as new building; it also leaves out non-profit landlords' rentals and homes sold at affordable prices.

What does the law already require?

Every application for Aides à la pierre must include a timetable with the planned start and end dates of the works (article 19 of the 2023 law, kept by the reform). The 2023 law sets this requirement; many of the 5,348 homes were conventioned before it (annex 9.1 lists conventions with homes back to 2009); this page did not check whether the earlier rules required such a date. Social landlords must report to the register the homes they allocate under its general procedure, and any refusal by applicants (article 53). Asked directly in question 4649 how many homes had been allocated to applicants in the register since it started, the minister gave no number (answer of 22 September 2026). The government said on 15 April 2026 that RENLA makes it possible to have an overview of the affordable stock, including its type, location and occupancy rate. The same release counted about 3,500 homes in the register and said that entering all of them, about 4,300, would be finished "in the coming weeks". Three months later the minister wrote that the ministry has no total number of affordable homes, citing instead the 4,489 public rental homes of annex 9.3 and adding that RENLA would be filled gradually with conventioned homes; on 22 September he wrote that the register did not yet cover the whole affordable stock and that homes were still being added gradually. Neither document says whether April's "all" (about 4,300 homes) and September's "whole affordable stock" are the same set of homes.

Neither the report nor the minister's answers publish planned end dates for each convention: annex 9.1 gives each convention's date, homes and unpaid balance, but no planned or actual end date. Only chapter 7 gives dates, for its largest projects: start years and planned durations (for example Neischmelz: started in spring 2024, planned to take 15 to 20 years) and, for eight projects with their own financing law, a planned period of works with an end year.

When the State buys homes itself, it does publish dates: its release of 18 December 2025 gave a dated completion calendar for the 358 off-plan (VEFA) homes it had acquired, from 68 already finished to 100 due in the third quarter of 2028. The report and the minister's answers give no comparable completion calendar for the 5,348 conventioned homes.

How many homes has the State bought off-plan (VEFA)?

The State also buys homes off-plan (VEFA). The 2025 report counts 460 homes at 31 December 2025 in its table and 565 in its own annex description of the same table, and its key figures call them acquired (section 6.2 says the State is committed to them), while the ministry's release of 18 December 2025 counted 358 acquired; none of the documents cited here reconciles them. Later counts include reservations (see the methodology). For the 358 homes, the ministry's calendar of December 2025, repeated in March 2026, gave 68 as finished and forecast the rest between early 2026 and the third quarter of 2028. Once finished, the homes are to be managed by SNHBM and the Fonds du Logement; therefore, do not add VEFA counts to the developers' figures. The July 2026 changes are in our explainer on the €300 million extension of the State's off-plan programme.

Waiting for an affordable rental: when will new homes arrive?

Of the 5,348 conventioned homes at 31 December 2025, 3,430 (64%) are planned as affordable rentals open to all, 19 are rentals for specific groups such as young adults, and 1,899 (36%) are for affordable sale, typically on a long lease (emphyteusis). That is a stock of projects of every age, not homes you can apply for today.

For the newest projects, the report's own timeline sets the pace. A convention to build homes is signed only once the developer has a detailed design, and building can then last 2 to 4 years, according to the report's explanatory annex. Therefore, on our reading of those general phase lengths, most of the 1,293 homes conventioned in 2025, more than twice the 504 of 2024, are unlikely to be ready before 2027, although some projects are already being built when they are conventioned and may arrive sooner. For older conventions, too, the report gives no completion date per convention.

On the demand side, the minister's answer to question 4649 of 22 September 2026 counted 12,401 applicant files in RENLA at 31 August 2026. He said it was still too early to judge whether RENLA speeds up matching homes and applicants, because the register does not yet cover all affordable homes, and that social landlords still allocate homes not yet in RENLA under their previous procedures.

In practice:

• If you were already on a social landlord's list, the ministry's RENLA page says your file was carried over automatically; if not, apply on MyGuichet.lu or with a social landlord (see who can register on RENLA and what rent you would pay).
• Ask the social landlords near you how they allocate homes that are not yet in the register.
• Keep looking on the private market in parallel (see the timing above).
• Know the new rules: the law of 7 September 2026 asks affordable tenants for a €3,000 rental guarantee, paid in instalments within two years of moving in (other changes in the methodology). None of this changes the 2025 counts above.

Worked example: reading one project in annex 9.1

Annex 9.1 of the report lists the inventory's conventions, project by project (a project can have several), with developer, locality, convention date, number of homes and the money still to pay at 31 December 2025. Take one row: SNHBM's résidence Rucio in Diekirch, 20 new rental homes conventioned on 27 January 2016, nearly ten years before the report's cut-off, with €979,180 still to pay at 31 December 2025.

The row does not say whether the 20 homes are finished, let or still being built. An old convention with money still to pay is not proof of a stalled project, because the final account may simply be outstanding. For a councillor or a resident, the useful question is therefore which of these homes are finished, and which are let.

What is the strongest case for the ministry?

Affordable projects take years: the report allows 2 to 4 years just for building the homes, after land, planning and infrastructure phases that can take much longer. The two developers counted build two of every three conventioned homes, and their homes "in realisation" rose sharply from 2023 to 2025. Dating 358 homes the State buys itself is easier than dating 5,348 homes built by dozens of developers, and the report does give start years and planned durations for its largest projects, and end years for eight of them. The minister also argues that a national register needs time to hold complete, reliable and current data (answer to question 4649). And he disclosed the gap himself, in writing, in answer to a question that asked for a commune-by-commune count.

That case is fair, and nothing on this page shows waste, delay or misuse in any project. But it does not close the gap. About a quarter of the homes added in 2025 sit outside the completion figures, neither the report nor the minister's answers give a national count of new homes let or sold, and the pipeline total changed between two reports. With the July 2026 report forecasting €476 million to €542 million a year until 2029, that is the missing fact.

What would change this conclusion?

Two results would change this page. A published count of homes finished and first let, by year and developer, communes and non-profit builders included, would close the central gap. And if the planned end dates in the 2025 applications show most of those 1,293 homes due in 2026, the advice to waiting renters is wrong. Two things to watch: allocation figures from RENLA, and the next Fonds spécial report, if it follows this year's July timing.

What can you do with this?

• If you read a housing announcement, place each number in the stage table before you compare or share it: land, payment, convention, building, finished, let.
• If you sit on a commune council or follow one, find your commune's projects in annex 9.1 (pages 67 to 89 of the report, listed by type of developer) and ask, as in the worked example, which are finished and let. Then compare your commune's affordable rental homes per 100 inhabitants in annex 9.3 (pages 95 to 97; national figure 0.65).
• If you want to buy an affordable home, RENLA will not help: it is for renters. Ask SNHBM, the Fonds du Logement or your commune; if you are considering buying off-plan on the private market, see our VEFA buying guide.

Should the ministry now publish the planned end dates that the 2023 law requires every application to contain, and an incomplete but dated count of homes finished and let, by developer, as it already does with a calendar for the homes it buys off-plan? Or should it wait until RENLA covers the whole stock, so that partial counts are not quoted as national totals? Tell us which, and why, in the comments at the end of this page.

This page explains public records. It is not legal or financial advice.