The granting of new loans in Spain is for the moment resisting the ECB’s cycle of interest rate hikes, despite the fact that a slight slowdown can already be seen in debt for home purchases. According to the latest data from the Bank of Spain, loans and credits granted to Spanish households in February stood at 8,357 million euros, a figure almost 100 million lower than that of the previous month, but still in line with the records of 2022 and of the previous years.
Consumer credit maintains its pulse, but the slowdown is beginning to be appreciated in mortgage loans, with operations for 3,996 million euros in February, compared to 4,102 million a month earlier. This volume is already the lowest since 2020.
In its latest financial stability report, the Bank of Spain already warns that the number of home sales and the flow of new mortgage credit “slowed down significantly in the second half of 2022”, with falls of 5.4% in the last quarter of the financial year.
The institution alludes to elements such as the loss of purchasing power of households and high uncertainty. It assumes that there will be a “progressive tightening of mortgage financing conditions”. Despite this, it indicates that “the volumes of sales and new mortgages remain above the levels observed in the years prior to the pandemic.” The Euribor closed February at 3.64%, compared to 3.56% in January.
In February, the total volume of credit granted by banks in Spain amounted to 1.19 trillion euros, the lowest level since before the pandemic. Spanish households and companies have also saved 922,920 million euros in deposits, 3.3% more than a year earlier, also according to data offered yesterday by the Bank of Spain.
