Since the beginning of the year, banks have loaned € 5883 million to buy a house.
Home loan continues to grow at a time when the housing market continues to grow. According to data released yesterday by Banco de Portugal, banks provided more than 1.3 billion euros in May. For the third month in a row, the volume of new home loans exceeded one billion euros.
Looking at the accumulation since the beginning of the year, new home loans totaled € 5,883 million, a figure that has not been that high since 2008, when JN / Live reported it to € 6,603 million in the same period. Money.
savings and interest rate
One of the reasons for this growth is the increase in savings in Portugal. According to Filipe Garcia, an IMF economist, in an interview with JN / DV, “The pandemic has affected families in a completely different way. Many of them now have better financial conditions than a year ago, thanks to various kinds of savings. All indicators show the overall growth in savings and deposits. Thus, when many families have the opportunity to “destroy” the house and have a relatively cheap loan, it turns out to be a perfectly understandable solution. “
In addition, at present “interest rates on deposits and other investments in the same volume are unattractive, and since there is no cultural appetite for financial investments, real estate is becoming an alternative for investment,” added the economist.
The increase in the number of new mortgages comes at the same time that prices in the residential real estate market continue to rise, albeit at a slower pace. According to INE, in the 1st quarter of 2021, the value of homes increased by 5.2% compared to 2020. That is why Filipe Garcia reminds that “even if the number of operations were the same, the amounts provided would be higher”.
