Thanks to data provided by Idealista, we know that more than 300,000 mortgages were signed in the year of market change. Seven out of every ten new loans are fixed rate while the reference rate for variable rate mortgages is rising and mixed mortgages are gaining prominence. The media reports that the signing of fixed mortgages has broken all records in 2022. For the first time in history, more than 300,000 families have opted for this type of financing for the purchase of housing in the same year. And there is still no official data on how 2022 ended.
According to the statistics published by the INE, “70.4% of the new mortgage loans signed in January were of this type, the highest percentage ever, while 29.6% were signed at a variable rate”. In total, the number of mortgages on homes in Spain stood at 36,185 in the first month of the year, a year-on-year increase of 29.4% and the eleventh consecutive month of growth. A figure that tells us the latest article published by the newspaper La Razón, and which, however, is below the 40,000 operations reached in the same month of 2019.
“Fixed-rate mortgages have been the favorite of homebuyers since April 2021. That month, and for the first time, they surpassed the variable ones in the INE statistics on new home loans signed. They did so because, during the Great Recession, and before the collapse due to the reduction of Euribor rates, the indicator to which most variable loans in Spain are referenced and which has been in negative territory since 2016; banks recovered fixed mortgages at attractive prices to ensure the income that was making them lose a Euribor in the red”, says La Razón.
According to the INE, between January and November last year, nearly 309,200 fixed mortgages were registered in the registries, surpassing the maximum achieved so far in all of 2021 (263,803 units), and practically doubling the volume of the year of the pandemic (160,300 operations). In 2022, and pending the December data, its weight in the market reaches 71.3% of the total volume of contracting.
José Manuel Fernández, deputy general manager of Unión de Créditos Inmobiliarios (UCI), maintains that “we have lived through a few years in which the fixed rate has clearly dominated the market, so it is likely that this message has permeated the bulk of buyers. However, the most decisive factor has been that for quite some time we have lived with historically low fixed interest rates and, as in any other market, the mortgage consumer is always going to look for the best for his pocket. It should also be borne in mind that the choice of a mortgage depends to a large extent on the risk aversion of the buyer, so it is normal that we have chained several years with a predominance of fixed rates, bearing in mind that their interest rates were very low until not so long ago. This situation made it very attractive to opt for fixed rates because of the stability they provide”.