The mortgage firm deepens its contraction month by month. The rise in rates and the tightening of conditions by banks makes a dent in the granting of housing credit and is behind the fall of 18.8% that occurred last July, coinciding with the first year of monetary tightening by the European Central Bank (ECB).
In the seventh month of the year, a total of 29,223 new contracts were signed for the acquisition of a property, according to data published on Wednesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). On the contrary, the average interest rate applied to loans continues its escalation and stood then at 3.24%, 1.32 points above the previous year and the highest figure since August 2016
In addition, the fixed rate continues to lose ground in favor of the variable rate, which rises driven by mixed mortgages that are also accounted for as such. Thus, 57.8% of mortgages on housing constituted in July were referenced at a fixed rate, increasingly far from the 75% reached in April 2022; On the other hand, 42.2% were signed at a variable rate.
By communities, the autonomous regions with the highest number of mortgages constituted on homes in July were Andalusia (5,932), Catalonia (5,279) and the Community of Madrid (4,404).
The regions with the highest annual variation rates in the number of mortgages on homes were Aragon (6.5%), the Balearic Islands (4.5%) and Extremadura (1.2%), while Cantabria (-31.1%), Galicia (-30.2%) and Catalonia (-25.8%) presented the largest decreases in their annual rates.