Rise in New Mortgages Hints at Recovery

NEW mortgages in Spain went up by nearly 17% in January this year – a healthy sign of the housing market beginning to recover.

The average mortgage taken out, according to January's figures – the latest on record as yet – was over a 23-year period, for a total loan of €112,844 and with an interest rate of 3.14%.

A growing number of mortgages are now becoming fixed-rate, despite the Euribor – Eurozone interest rate – showing no signs of rising in the foreseeable future, and 36.8% of new home loans were set up with a fixed level of interest rate in last year.

Over the 12-month period up to January 2017, a total of 27,240 mortgage contracts were signed, or an increase of 16.9% year-on-year.

And in that month alone, a total of €3.01 billion was borrowed to buy property across the country – a rise of 24.5% on January 2016.

The amounts borrowed in January were 6.4% higher than in the same month in 2016, although only 0.1% more than in the previous month, December 2016.

Mortgages taken out purely for residential homes made up 61% of the total, with the rest being for plots of land and commercial premises.

Extract from an article written by ThinkSpain