The mortgage firm continues to advance in Spain, and has already completed a year of consecutive year-on-year increases.
According to INE data, in February, 36,537 loans for home purchase were registered in the records, 1% more than in January and 14.6% more than in the second month of last year. Thanks to this upturn, the twelfth in a row, In the first two months of 2022, registered mortgages accumulated an increase of 21.5%.
The number of mortgages is very close to the 36,702 mortgages that were signed in February 2020, just before the pandemic broke out, and it is the highest since September 2021.
In the second month of 2022 The average amount of loans and the capital that banks lend for home purchases have also grown. Specifically, the statistics show an increase of 7.6% year-on-year in the average amount of mortgages constituted, after standing at 141,752 euros; and 23.4% in the case of capital loaned by banks, up to 5,179.2 million euros. At the intermonthly rate (February over January), the capital loaned increased by 1.2%, well below what it did in February 2021 (+16.2%) and in February 2020 (+40.6%). ).
But if there is one striking fact, it is the new record set by the fixed interest rate. According to the INE, 26.2% of home mortgages were constituted last February at a variable rate, while 73.8% were signed at a fixed rate. This is the highest percentage in the historical series.
On the other hand, the average interest rate for all mortgage loans on homes stood at 2.52% in February, above the 2.44% of a year earlier, with an average term of 24 years. Compared to previous months, the average rate has registered a slight decrease and marks a minimum since last September.
As explained Juan Villén, head of idealista/mortgages, “February’s data continues to reflect the strong dynamism of housing sales transactions, as well as mortgage exchange activity. The new record for the weight of fixed mortgages stands out, reaching 73.8% of new mortgages, reflecting the priority that consumers give to protection against imminent increases in interest rates. Prices are still at low levels, as they do not reflect the increases in conditions that banks are applying since March, and that we will surely begin to see clearly -especially in fixed mortgages- in the April statistics”.
Data by CCAA
The statistical agency places Andalusia (6,961), Community of Madrid (6,464) and Catalonia (6,075) as the regions with the highest number of mortgages constituted on dwellings in February. And they are also the regions where banks lend the most capital for home purchases, although in this case it is Madrid that leads the national ranking with 1,387.9 million euros, followed by Catalonia (999.9 million) and Andalusia (838. 9 million).
The communities with the highest annual variation rates in the borrowed capital are La Rioja (54.6%), Comunidad de Madrid (36%) and Castilla-La Mancha (33.8%), while the regions with higher annual variation rates in the number of mortgages regarding dwellings are La Rioja (41.9%), Canarias (26%), Castilla-La Mancha (25.1%), Cantabria (23.9%) and Baleares (23.7%). With rises of less than 20%, but above the national average, are Catalonia, Madrid, the Basque Country, Extremadura and Andalusia.
Despite the fact that in Spain as a whole the constitution of loans has increased by more than 14% year-on-year, four CCAA register a negative variation rate Compared to February 2021: Aragón (-7.1%), Asturias (-4.6%), Galicia (-3%) and Navarra (-2.3%).