The symptoms of a slowdown in the mortgage market are evident. The granting of mortgages to acquire housing is sinking due to the increase in financing costs and the decline in demand. According to data from the General Council of Notaries, loans for this purpose plummeted by 26.4% year-on-year last March, in which 27,192 operations were signed.
The downward trend has been maintained for four months. "The data for the last quarter of 2022, and those for the first quarter of this year confirm this evolution, marked by the successive rises in interest rates that have occurred since last July," says Raquel Iglesias, vice dean of the Notarial College de Catalunya, which has presented its data today.
In this community, mortgage loans to buy a flat decreased by 29.4% in March, three points below the national average of 26.4%, the largest interannual decrease registered in the last year. Other autonomous communities with similar falls were the Basque Country (-29.6%), the Canary Islands (-28.3%) and Murcia (-28.2%).
For their part, Navarra, Asturias, Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid registered decreases of more than 30%, where there were decreases of 43.7%, 43.1%, 32.6% and 31.8%, respectively. In contrast, the Communities in which the granting of credit decreased the least were La Rioja (-24.7%), Galicia (-23.6%), Comunidad Valenciana (-21.8%), Extremadura (-21.0 %), Andalucía (-20.2%), the Balearic Islands (-19.6%), Castilla y León (-19.3%), Cantabria (-19.0%) and Aragón (-16.0%).
The average amount of these loans fell by 4.4%, to 146,870 euros. In almost half of the home sales -42.7%- financing was needed to close the operation, representing the amount to finance 70.9% of the price of the property.
The difficulty in accessing credit is reflected in the number of sales, which fell by 11.7% year-on-year in March, to 63,661 units, and the average price stood at €1,580/m², registering a decrease of 2.6 %.
