Mothers of Babies Can Get 2.5M Dinars for Rural Home

Serbia’s government, currently operating in a technical mandate, adopted a decree on September 17, 2026, setting out the detailed conditions for exercising the right to cash support for buying a rural house with land on the basis of a child’s birth. The decree allows two existing state support measures to be combined for the same property for the first time.

Mothers of children up to one year old who meet the conditions of both programs can apply. The market value of the rural house with land must not exceed 2.5 million dinars (about 21,300 euros), and the funds are nonrefundable, according to the government’s statement.

How the two amounts add up to 2.5 million dinars

The total is drawn from two sources. Up to 1.5 million dinars (about 12,800 euros) comes through the Ministry for Rural Care’s program for buying a rural house with land. The remaining amount, up to 1 million dinars (about 8,500 euros), comes through a subsidy from the Ministry for Family Care and Demography, which is otherwise awarded for buying a first property on the basis of a child’s birth. Until now the two measures existed separately, each with its own application process, meaning a mother had to choose between them.

The measure is carried out jointly by the Ministry for Family Care and Demography and the Ministry for Rural Care. The family affairs portfolio, in the technical mandate, is led by Minister Jelena Zaric Kovacevic.

“We want to improve the population structure in rural areas, boost demographic development and give families more concrete support at the moment they are settling one of the most important questions in their lives,” Zaric Kovacevic said.

The statement was made in connection with the merging of the two measures, explaining the goal of the decree: to let a family permanently resolve its housing question in a village with a single application, rather than having to choose between two separate competitions.

Today’s decision was reached in three steps. The Ministry for Family Care and Demography and the Ministry for Rural Care signed a Memorandum of Cooperation on August 28, 2026, aimed at linking the two measures. On September 11, the government adopted amendments to the Decree on the Program for Allocating Nonrefundable Funds for Buying a Rural House with Land for 2026, which extended eligibility to apply to mothers of newborn children, with no age limit on the mother. The decree adopted on September 17 is the third and final step, the one that formally merges the two measures into a single application.

According to the government’s statement, the goal of the measure is to give families a roof over their heads, encourage people to live in rural areas, and contribute to the demographic and economic strengthening of villages. The Ministry for Rural Care has run the program allocating nonrefundable funds for buying rural houses since 2019, while the Ministry for Family Care and Demography’s subsidy for a first property on the basis of a child’s birth has existed as a separate measure since earlier.

Neither the government, the Ministry for Family Care and Demography, nor the Ministry for Rural Care has yet announced when applications will open under the merged decree, nor specified how the request should be submitted. Until that step is taken, the conditions remain the same as for each of the two measures on their own: a mother of a child up to one year old, and a village house priced at no more than 2.5 million dinars.