The relentless rise of the Euribor, which has chained 15 consecutive months of rises, is putting many consumers in trouble with difficulties in paying their installments. In order to avoid a new wave of evictions, last November the 2012 Code of Good Practices was extended to protect mortgage debtors without resources. Recently, the Bank of Spain has launched a simulator to calculate if the requirements that give the right to benefit from the rescue plan, to which more than fifty financial entities have adhered, are met.
The tool, which can be found on the Banking Customer Portal, also makes it possible to find out the impact on mortgage debt in terms of installment, term, applicable rate or grace period. To do this, the consumer must provide a series of data, such as the name of the bank, if it is a habitual residence, if it was purchased at a price of less than 300,000 euros, if the mortgage contract was formalized before December 31, 2022 and the amount of the fee.
Likewise, you must provide data on your economic situation, such as the gross and net income of the family unit or if someone with a disability greater than 33% lives in the home, a situation of dependency or illness that makes them unable to work. Other data that must be entered is whether the family is large or single-parent with dependent children, whether there are minors residing in the home or victims of sexist violence or sexual exploitation. Another of the data requested to make the calculation is if the debtor is over 60 years of age.
In addition to the simulator, the Bank of Spain has published a guide to informative tools to facilitate understanding for citizens with mortgage payment difficulties about the measures designed to help them and the conditions they must meet to access them. In this sense, the measures to help debtors in vulnerable situations, included in Royal Decree-Law 19/2022, range from extending the repayment term for a maximum of seven years and freezing the mortgage payment for one year to the existing on June 1, 2022 until the variable interest rate becomes a fixed rate, converting the formula for calculating the interest of the initial loan. However, this conversion depends on what each entity freely decides to offer.
The Bank of Spain has undertaken to closely monitor that Spanish financial institutions comply with the agreement with the Government to alleviate the mortgage debt on the habitual residence of vulnerable clients. Since last January, more than 9,000 people have applied to adhere to the Code of Good Practices.
