Mortgage activity withstood the accelerated rise in interest rates that took place last year. In total, 463,614 loans were granted, a 10,9% more than in 2021, the year in which the granting of mortgages rose 24%. In volume, it is the highest number of loans granted for the purchase of housing since 2010. The increase in the granting occurred despite the fact that the second semester was marked by a sharp increase in the price of money by the European Central Bank to control inflation to 2.5%, which it reached in December (currently rates stand at 3% after the hike approved in February).
The data made public this Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) also reveal that the average amount of mortgages registered in property records increased by 6.5% to 157,506 euros. Overall, the capital lent to set them up stood at 67,461 million euros after increasing by 17.3% year-on-year.
In the last month of the year, mortgage activity suffered, since a total of 30,075 mortgages were signed, which represents a fall of 8.8% in relation to the previous year. The average amount of the loans stood at 143,854 euros, with a slight downward variation of 0.4%. The fall was greater in the case of borrowed capital, which fell by 9.2% to finally settle at 4,326.4 million euros.
The average interest rate was 2.67%
In residential mortgages, the average interest rate was 2.67% in December and the average term at which they were established was 24 years. 34.5% of home mortgages were contracted at a variable rate and 65.5% at a fixed rate. The average interest rate at the start of the loan was 2.18% for variable-rate home mortgages and 2.93% for fixed-rate ones.
The total number of mortgages in which there were changes in their conditions in December was 10,100, a figure that represents a decrease of 30.4% in relation to the same month of the previous year. After the change of conditions, the percentage of fixed interest mortgages went from 13.2% to 53.8%while that of mortgages at variable interest decreased from 85.7% to 44.2%.
Considering the type of change in the conditions, in the last month of the year there were 8,399 novations (modifications with the same financial entity), with an annual decrease of 31.1%. Meanwhile, the number of operations that change entities (subrogations to the creditor) fell by 21.6% and the number of mortgages in which the owner of the mortgaged asset changes (subrogations to the debtor) fell by 42%.
The autonomies with the highest number of mortgages constituted on homes in December they were Andalucía (6,836), Cataluña (5,282) and Comunidad de Madrid (4,401). The regions in which more capital was lent for the constitution of home mortgages were also Madrid (923.8 million euros), Catalonia (868.4 million) and Andalusia (with a total of 860.8 million).
Will the mortgage market stabilize this year?
Looking ahead to the current financial year, it is expected that the change in trend towards lower levels in the volume of mortgages will be consolidated, points out Santiago Martínez Morando, head of Economic and Financial Analysis at Ibercaja. From his point of view, the financial system has the capacity to continue granting credit, “as shown by the solvency indicators or the credit-to-deposit ratio (which is below unity).” Despite this, he believes that demographic and social trends, the slowdown in the economy and the rise in interest rates point to lower demand by households.