One of the great fears that have unleashed the interest rate hikes approved by the European Central Bank (ECB) and their subsequent transfer to the euribor is that those households with lower incomes have problems paying your mortgage and unleash a wave of defaults. Funcas assures that there are more than 250,000 at the limit due to the rise in the Euribor. And the Bank of Spain, which at the end of last year, 7% of mortgaged families anticipated difficulties in meeting this payment. But, for now, the situation seems under control and doubtful loans are kept at bay.
According to the latest data from the Spanish Mortgage Association (AHE) collected in its report on “Doubtful property loan rates” corresponding to the last quarter of 2022, the loan portfolio granted for home purchase purposes, which accounts for four out of ten loans in force from the private sector, showed a good performance in terms of doubtful accounts. According to the analysis, the doubtful exposures of this heading, which amount to 11,459 million euros, maintained a significant drop after closing the year with an annual decrease of 22% and a quarterly decrease of 9%. In this portfolio, the Doubtful assets represented 2.3% of total housing loans at the end of the year, which revealed a improvement of 0.2 points and 0.7 percentage points with respect to the quarter and the previous yearrespectively.
The AHE attributes this good behavior to both the measures approved by the Government to help households in difficulties as well as those taken voluntarily by financial institutions before the evolution of the economic situation. In this segment, he recalls, “a series of measures have been promulgated, by virtue of Royal Decree-Law 19/2022 of November 22, aimed at alleviating the financial burden of families at risk of vulnerability that have been affected by the increase in interest rates. The latter, together with the actions carried out internally by the entities to strengthen the payment capacity of the borrowers, contributes to risk management to solve eventual default problems”, he adds. A planning that becomes “crucial in the framework of the current macroeconomic context”, according to this institution.
Looking ahead to what is to come, and despite the fact that the AHE admits that the economic environment is “complex” and that the effects of the rise in interest rates have not yet been fully felt in credit portfolios, the association does not consider a scenario of serious deterioration thanks to the support measures enacted to combat episodes of inflation and also due to the resilience that the labor market has been showing in general, key to guaranteeing the sustainability and sanitation of credit portfolios, according to the AHE.