The Euribor opens in summer with a value above 4% and the experts’ forecast is consolidated. His race to cross that threshold has been steady and steady, but frustrated from time to time in 2023 by market importunities.
On March 9, four months ago, its daily rate reached 3.978%. Within hours, the failure of Silicon Valley Bank in the United States had shaken the American and European banking systems. By March 14, its value had collapsed to 3.509%.
The Euribor has proved resilient, however, and has made hundreds of thousands of variable mortgages more expensive in its wake. As the financial dynamics of our country become Europeanized, those who are about to apply for a mortgage right now already prefer a fixed one or, failing that, a mixed one.
The analysts and experts in mortgage loans at Housfy Hipotecas agree on the same hypothesis: the reference index for variable mortgages would reach its ceiling at the end of 2023.
I would do it about 4.5%. The worst case scenario, and as long as the ECB decides to raise interest rates also in September, would place the Euribor a quarter of a point higher, at 4.75%, at the end of 2023.
From there, a period of gradual de-escalation would begin in 2024 that would be in line with the ECB’s interest rate reduction. As the following graph shows, the Euribor would enter 2025 with a rate similar to 2.2%:
The Euribor is subject to the interest rates periodically set by those responsible for monetary policy at the European Central Bank (ECB). Since 2022, the European institution has begun to apply restrictive financial conditions to slow down the economy and retain inflation in the euro zone.
Spain has managed to moderate its inflation more successfully than most neighboring countries and registers a leading CPI of 1.9% in June 2023. The objective of the euro area is to reach 2% by 2025.
Germany, for example, a country with a fixed-rate mortgage tradition, triples the Spanish inflation figure in June (6.4%). It is curious, if anything, that those who are having the greatest affectations are the Spanish mortgagees, for being a country with a vast outstanding credit at variable rates.
And it is that, as long as the most powerful European countries do not see their inflation controlled, interest rates will continue at draconian levels throughout the euro area.
