75.3% of home loans were taken out at a fixed rate in April, the highest in the series
Expectations of rising interest rates and economic uncertainty are beginning to affect the Spanish mortgage market, which has managed to maintain historic growth rates month after month in the heat of homebuying rage.
A trend that, while continuing to rise, experienced a notable slowdown in April, but slowed down significantly in April, the first month in which the average Euribor, the indicator most mortgages refer to in Spain, closed positively (0.013) for the first time. since 2016.
Specifically, and according to statistics published Friday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the market closed that month with 33,423 mortgages issued, a figure that still implies a growth of 4.5% compared to the same month of 2021. But it is far from the 18% increase in March, when 43,378 housing loans were signed. It is also the lowest annual growth rate in mortgages since February 2021.
It is true that the total number of loans is the highest in April since 2010, when more than 50,000 mortgages were taken out. But also the lowest annual growth rate since February 2021.
“As has been recorded for months, the trend in the number of mortgages continues to rise, but in April the impact of inflation and the moderation in the number of transactions compared to previous years was clearly noticed,” he says. Ferrán Font, director of the Pisos.com research service.
This correction, he notes, “goes hand in hand with a fresh increase in the average amount of said mortgages due to the rise in house prices in the inflationary context we are experiencing.”
In the fourth month of the year in particular, the average interest rate on residential mortgages was 2.52%, up from 2.51% a year earlier, with an average term of 25 years.
The expectation of a larger rise in the Euribor has also accelerated the signing of fixed-rate mortgages, though we’ll have to wait and see if it consolidates in the coming months as banks have been trying for some time to make their variable loans more attractive in the expectation that they will be more profitable in the medium term. will be in a context of interest rates.
For the time being, the number of fixed-rate mortgages continued to rise in April, already representing 75.3% of total new production. A new record that represents an increase of almost 3 percentage points compared to March, thanks to 24.7% of floating rate mortgages.
Initially, the average interest rate was 2.16% for floating-rate residential mortgages and 2.65% for fixed-rate mortgages.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
