The rebound that the eurybor has experienced during the last ten months has had as a side effect an increase in the cost of new mortgages -especially fixed ones-. A rise that is already beginning to be reflected in the official data on the interest rates of new loans, which reflect that those of mortgages They are already at levels of a decade ago.
Specifically, the average APR of the new loans that are being granted for the purchase of housing is in the 2,85%according to the provisional figures for the month of November, the latest available for the Bank of Spain.
This level is the highest not only in the past year, but also in the last ten years. Such a high APR has not been seen in the case of mortgages since 2013, the year in which this interest closed at 3.16%.
[El Euríbor cierra el año por encima del 3%: el valor de diciembre encarece de nuevo las hipotecas variables]
A decade ago things were different in the mortgage market. The Spanish economy assumed the bursting of the real estate bubble, interest rates in the euro zone were already at zero and the twelve-month Euribor -which is taken as a reference for the interest of the variables- stood at 0, 54%
At that time, variable mortgages were mainly granted. They represented 94.1% of the total, compared to the meager 5.9% of fixed mortgages, according to the historical records of the Statistics National Institute (INE).
[La cuota de la hipoteca variable sube un 30% en un año y se acerca a lo que se pagaba en 2008]
Now, however, real estate credit is not a drag on the banking sector, which enjoys interest rates at 2.5% – with the prospect that they will continue to rise at the rate meeting of the European Central Bank (ECB) on February 2- and a Euribor that in its provisional average for January marks 3.324%.
The changes that the six negative years of this index and, subsequently, its rebound have caused in the market have led to currently variable mortgages barely constituting a third of the total new production.
Attractive for banks
But, what is this rise in mortgage interest due to? To a collateral effect of the increase in the Euribor. During the years in which this index was negative, logically, variable mortgages ceased to be interesting for banks, since the only thing these loans did was reduce their installments year by year (or semester by semester, depending on each case). ).
The fixed mortgage then became the favorite for the sector… and also for clients, who found in this type of loan a predictability that variable mortgages did not offer: with them they would always pay the same installment.
Thus, fixed mortgages went from being almost residual to becoming the absolute protagonists of the market, with constant price drops. So until they became the cheapest in history, in December 2021.
When the Euribor went negative, in February 2016, the average APR of mortgages in Spain was 2.33%. Since then it has systematically fallen to the minimum of 1.5%, which was touched in December 2021.
But everything changed the following month. In January 2022 the twelve-month Euribor began to show signs of a change in trendwhich were confirmed the following month and worsened later, until crossing the zero line on April 12.
At that time, the average APR at which mortgages were granted rose to 1.647%. And from there to the maximum of the last decade, which reached in November, the latest data available from the Bank of Spain.
In the following months, it would be logical for it to have an impact on those highs, since since November, when the Euribor closed at 2.83%, up to now the index has not stopped growing, with some moments, yes, of a certain moderation.
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