The real estate portals Fotocasa and Idealista forecast a moderation of mortgage activity in the coming months, after the signing of mortgages on housing registered in June an annual increase of 10.8%, reaching 45,907 operations, according to the figures released this Wednesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
The director of Studies at Fotocasa, María Matos, has highlighted that the mortgage market continues to show a "high dynamism," although she emphasized that the statistics do not yet fully reflect the impact of the recent change in monetary and financial conditions.
In this line, she pointed out that a significant part of the mortgages formalized in June corresponds to purchase and financing processes initiated at least two months earlier, so the effect of the new interest rate scenario could become more visible in the upcoming publications.
From Fotocasa, they therefore anticipate that the mortgage market "will begin to lose speed" as the new financial conditions are incorporated into the operations, in an environment characterized by high housing prices and insufficient supply. Matos estimates that, after a phase of strong expansion, it is most likely to move towards a certain normalization of activity, with a more cautious buyer and financial entities with stricter criteria.
On the other hand, the general director of idealista/hipotecas, Juan Villén, has described the intense dynamism of mortgages as "surprising" in contrast to the slowdown in the volume of home sales. In his opinion, this evolution responds mainly to two factors: the increase in the weight of buyers who require financing to access a home and the greater number of mortgage change operations due to the rise in rates.
Villén has detailed that some financial entities are proceeding to cancel previous loans and to establish new ones, which "inflates the total figure" of registered mortgages. In the short term, idealista anticipates that there will be greater restraint in the number of mortgages intended for the acquisition of housing, while the volume of consumers modifying their loans to protect themselves against the increase in interest rates will continue to rise.