Banks have received some 7,000 requests for help in the two months that have passed since the new Code of Good Practices to help families drowned by the increase in the cost of their mortgages, although the banks do not provide data on how many loans they have modified.
According to financial sources, in the middle of last week the volume of requests received by the big banks –Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Sabadell, Bankinter and Unicaja Banco– and by other entities it exceeded 6,000, but that figure does not translate into aid granted.
It is, the same sources explain, queries and requests that in some cases fail if the client gives up receiving this type of aid when receiving detailed information on the different ways to alleviate their mortgage installment.
The difference between the requests received by the entities is very notable, since it depends both on the customer profile and on the credit portfolio, in which the variable mortgageswhich are becoming more expensive with the rise in the Euribor.
As an example, according to Efeonly CaixaBank It had received some 1,500 customer requests in mid-February, compared to the 33 requests that Bankinter had on the table. Other entities such as Santander or BBVA declined to reveal their data.
Some banks agree that the number of requests to date is “very low” And, although they assume that it will increase as the mortgages are reviewed and the Euribor increases are taken into account, they believe that the final number of beneficiaries will be far from the million families that the Government anticipated.
help mortgages
At the end of November, the Government approved a battery of mortgage relief measures which entered into force in 2022 with the objective that one in three households with variable-rate mortgages could see their financial burden reduced.
In Spain 3.7 million households They have a variable-rate mortgage and the Executive calculated that more than a million of them could choose to reduce their installments with the approved measures.
For the vulnerable families, the Code of Good Practices approved in 2012 was updated to give the option to restructure the mortgage with a lower interest rate during the 5-year principal grace period. The term to request a dation in payment was also extended to 2 years and the possibility of a second restructuring was included, if necessary.
In the case of middle-class families with liquidity problems, not solvency, the approved measures were designed for some 750,000 households with incomes of up to 29,400 euros per yearin which the mortgage has risen by at least 20% and consumes more than 30% of their income.
Finally, there were additional measures in which expenses were further reduced and commissions to facilitate the change from variable rate to fixed rate and the commissions for early repayment and change of mortgage from variable to fixed rate are eliminated throughout 2023