The brokers of Housfy Hipotecas, a mortgage brokerage company with agreements with twenty banks in the country, negotiate with the entities on a daily basis to find special conditions for the users who use their services. We asked them what is the best interest rate they have found as of July 2023 and what conditions the banks request to grant them.
The best fixed mortgage that Housfy has processed this month enjoys a 2.5% TIN. It is a subsidized interest rate that not everyone can access, but profiles with a very solvent economy and after an arduous negotiation with the bank.
The latest public data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE, April 2023) place the average interest rate in Spain at 3.29%, eight tenths higher than the offer processed by Housfy and more than 1.5% more than a year ago (April 2022), when they began to rise consecutively.
David Espiago, from Housfy Hipotecas, considers that delaying in requesting a mortgage is risking buying more expensive, since a large drop in the price of flats is not predicted. It is expected that, from now on, interest rates will rise, perhaps with less aggressiveness, while the Euribor presents monthly increases.
Mixed mortgage loans combine the best of both modalities: a lower fixed interest rate during the first years and a variable one for the rest of the period, when, according to the Euribor forecast, this index has already had time to redirect its upward course.
The best mixed mortgage formalized by Housfy this month has a fixed first 3 years at 1.60% TIN and, afterwards, Euribor 0.5%.
According to Housfy data, mixed mortgages were 27.6% of the contracts during the past month. Almost 1 in 4 applicants therefore decided to bet on this type of loan.
The lowest variable interest rate processed by Housfy is Euribor 0.2%, a figure identical to that of the previous month.
It would not be very advisable to opt for a variable mortgage because of the uncertainty of the market, admits Espiago; only if the applicant has a more adventurous profile, if he anticipates an increase in his income in the near future or if, faced with an even more pronounced rise in the Euribor, he considers paying off the mortgage early.
As the following graph shows, this type of loan has lost prominence after the recent hesitations in the market. They no longer account for 97% of the mortgages granted, as they did more than a decade ago, but they still maintain a significant bulk of the total number of contracts:
The mortgage specialist David Espiago reveals that the contractors who have access to these types have a total income of more than €3,000, a mortgage of more than €300,000 and the installments do not exceed 40% of the income.
On the other hand, the main reasons why banks today refuse to grant a mortgage are for having a job seniority of less than 12 months or a residual income of less than €1,200.
