Thursday, February 28, 2008

Number of mortgages fall in Spain

Number of mortgages in Spain fall by 8% in 2007

Despite the slowdown in the Spanish housing market the value of an average mortgage for a house or flat in Spain went up last year to 149,007 euros. This is 6.2% more than the average for 2006 in which mortgages increased by 12.6%. However, the total number of mortgages taken out for the purpose of buying a home went down by 7.97% to 1,235,212 following a sharp fall of 23.41% registered in December 2007.

A similar situation occurred with regards to the sale of property for commercial or rural use. The average capital needed to purchase land or property rose by 7% to 168,677. However, there were less mortgages of this type taken out with respect to the previous year with a drop of 5.1% compared to 2006 at 1,768,198 estates sold.

Looking at statistics for the last quarter of 2007 the drop in property sales becomes even more evident as well as a drop of 2.2% in the average price of a mortgage compared to November 2007 which shows an accumulated decrease of 5%.
However, the cost of mortgages kept going up with some monthly payments going up by as much as 118.05 euros according to figures from the Spanish National Institute for Statistics published yesterday.

Comparing the average number of years a mortgage is taken out, the type of interest paid and the average price of a mortgage it appears that monthly payments in 2007 were situated at 825.63 euros compared to 707.58 euros for 2006 which works out at 13.52% more.

Savings banks (cajas de ahorros) conceded the most number of mortgages in 2007 at 59.2% followed by banks which conceded up to 31.7% - other financial institutions were responsible for 9.1%.

As far as the amount conceded, savings banks conceded up to 57.2% of the total followed by banks which conceded up to 35.1%. The average interest charged on a mortgage was 4.71% and the average length was 26 years, one more than in 2006.

According to the latest information 98% of mortgages used variable rates compared to just 2% that used a fixed rate and the euribor was the most common rate used with 87%of mortgages using this interest rate as their reference.

The number of mortgages that changed their conditions rose by 26.2% in December last year while cancellations dropped by 10.1%.

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posted by Euroresidentes at 9:23:00 AM

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