Spain’s mortgage market started the year with a 10% drop compared to January 2024, recording 33,128 loans, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) published on Tuesday. Despite this decline, the focus is on the average interest rate, which continues to rise and is now at 3.46%, the highest since December 2014.
This year-on-year drop in January marks 12 consecutive months of negative rates, although it is the least pronounced drop compared to the previous month. The average amount of mortgages on homes decreased by 2.7% year-on-year in January to 138,149 euros, while the capital lent decreased by 12.7% to 4,576.5 million euros.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has played a significant role in driving up interest rates for home mortgages in Spain due to its rate policy and the evolution of Euribor. About 42% of mortgages were at a variable rate and 58.2% at a fixed rate. The average interest rate for variable rate mortgages was 3.24% and for fixed rate mortgages was
