Closes 2022 with nearly half a million transactions, the highest in 12 years, though the market shows signs of slowing in December
The historic rise in interest rates has not prevented 2022 from closing with a record number of nearly half a million mortgages not seen in more than a decade, but it has impacted the terms being signed, which have changed radically this year. year. For example, in a time of economic uncertainty and given that the Euribor will continue to grow, buyers have opted for the security of a fixed interest rate on their mortgage, so that seven out of ten mortgages they signed in 2022 were fixed at a fixed interest rate. rate, the highest rate since the National Institute of Statistics (INE) began publishing this data in 2003, according to statistics released this Thursday by the public body.
This is a total break from the trend, because until 2021, variable rate mortgages were always the most chosen among home buyers. In fact, just twelve years ago, fixed rate transactions were residual, barely 2.7% in 2010, a rate that increased slightly over the years: 7.4% in 2015, 23.7% in 2016, 42.1 % in 2019… and before 2021, the fixed rate was higher than the variable rate for the first time.
In concrete terms, more than 328,000 fixed-rate mortgages were registered in Spain in 2022, about 80,000 more than in 2021, despite the fact that the average interest rate was higher than the variable interest rate: 2.71% against 2.09%. However, it should be noted that fixed rate has fallen throughout the year and even experts predict it will continue to fall as mixed mortgages are now the most in demand; in fact, they have gone from 6% of total operations in December 2021 to 31% in December 2022.
In general, the mortgage lender has also moved from more to less throughout the year. 463,614 operations were formalized, 10.9% more than a year ago and the highest figure since 2010. However, after 21 months of growth, the number of mortgages to buy a home fell by 8.8% year-on-year, already a reflects a clear symptom of a slowdown in the real estate market due to the rise in borrowing costs following the ECB’s rate hike.
And it is that in December the interest rate rose to 2.67%, the highest since April 2018, and even the fixed rate was almost 3% (2.93%), practically equating itself with the Euribor for that month, which escalated to a maximum of 3%.
For example, the average amount of mortgages on homes increased by 5.8% in 2022 to EUR 145,510, the highest value since 2007, while the capital lent as a whole increased by 17.3% to more than EUR 67,460 million in the past year.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
