The Director of Studies of the pisos.com portal, Ferran Font, has pointed out that "last September continues with the irregular trend of this 2024. After an August with an increase of 8.8%, the more than 41,000 mortgages granted mean a growth of 34%, a figure that has not been exceeded since the spring of 2021.”
This is what he states after learning about the new statistical report on housing offered by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). The official body "sheds light on the Spanish mortgage market and provides national data on the signing of mortgage contracts registered during the month of September."
Font gets to the point: “The ECB's interest rate policy is beginning to be visible and the average interest rate at the beginning of the loan is 3.14%, the lowest since April 2023. A year ago that figure was 3.26%. On the other hand, variable-rate mortgages are losing ground again and moving away from half of the total, remaining at 38% of the total. As it could not be otherwise, fixed-rate mortgages gain some weight and exceed 61%.”
At the territorial level, those who lead this statistic are Andalusia, Catalonia and Madrid, with more than 8,000 mortgages granted in the first case, and almost 7,000 in the other two. As usual, La Rioja is in the lowest part with 248 mortgages granted. Galicia leads the growth with 73.7% in a month where in all the communities more credits have been granted for the purchase of a home than a year ago. In the main markets we observe how all clearly exceed the activity of last year, with growth of 28% in Catalonia, 43% in Andalusia and 19% in Madrid.
The Director of Studies of pisos.com concludes: “With these data we see that the irregular trend of 2024 continues, although on this occasion the annual growth skyrockets. The reactivation of the market is a fact and so far this year 3.6% more mortgages have already been signed than during the same period in 2023. On the other hand, the downward evolution of rates is already marking the present and will continue to do so in the short and medium term, which will increase the granting of mortgages with certainty. This interest rate policy will be clearly conditioned by the geopolitical situation and the evolution of inflation and the economy of both Spain and the Eurozone.”
