Bank Of Spain: Demand For Home Loans Increases Again

28 January 2015 – Expansión

The bank loan survey carried out by the Bank of Spain and the main Spanish financial institutions shows that “requests from families for home loans increased in January, after remaining stable during the previous three months in Spain and continued their progress in the Eurozone”. The report explains that “the main drivers of this development was an improvement in the prospects of the housing marketing and an increase in consumer confidence”.

Just yesterday, INE reported that the mortgage market grew in November for the sixth consecutive month, this time by 14.2% with respect to November 2013. Specifically, 15,900 new home loans were signed in November, 10.1% fewer than the 17,687 taken out in October. The average mortgage amounted to €104,817 in November, compared with €99,866 in the previous month, representing an increase of 5%.

Management of fotocasa.es, the real estate portal, interviewed by Efe, considers that these data confirm that “the desired reactivation of mortgage financing” was achieved in 2014, as a result of “increased activity in the economy, better prospects for the real estate market and the need for banks to do business following the liquidity crisis”.

In this sense, the Bank of Spain’s survey explains that the criteria for approving new loans were “somewhat less restrictive” for home loans than for unsecured loans.

In terms of corporate loans “the growth in requests for loans by SMEs was higher than those for large companies in Spain”.

Original story: Expansión (by Y. González)

Translation: Carmel Drake