Which bank grants a mortgage if you only have 10% down payment: the options to finance more than 80%

The implementation of new public mortgage guarantee programs (public guarantees for home purchase) does not have its own "special procedure," but rather fits within the general channels of economic and budgetary policy development. In practice, it usually combines Government decisions (technical design and implementation) with authorizations and normative and budgetary coverage granted by the Cortes Generales.

1. Usual normative routes

To create or expand a mortgage guarantee program, mainly three types of instruments are used:

• Ordinary law: it can be a sectoral law (on housing, financial regulation, guarantee funds, etc.) that creates or redefines the program, sets its basic legal framework (beneficiaries, risk limits, budget guarantees, supervision), and authorizes the Government to develop it by regulation.
• General State Budget Law (PGE): it is the most frequent vehicle to:
  • Authorize the granting of guarantees up to a certain maximum amount.
  • Allocate funds to cover risks, administrative costs, or provisions.
  • Include additional provisions that specify aspects of the program.
• Royal decree-law: in situations of "extraordinary and urgent need," the Government can approve by royal decree-law the creation or expansion of a guarantee program, with immediate effect, subject later to ratification by the Congress within a maximum period of 30 days. This is a frequent route when a quick response to tensions in the housing or credit market is desired.

2. Phases and bodies involved

a) Governmental phase (preparation)

• Competent Ministry (usually Housing, Economy, or Treasury) prepares the technical proposal: program design, limits per operation, eligibility criteria, risk distribution, budgetary and financial stability impact.
• Internal reports: general intervention, legal services, supervisors (for example, Bank of Spain if it affects the financial system) may issue reports.
• Council of Ministers:
  • Approves the draft bill or the PGE project that incorporates the program.
  • Or, if applicable, adopts a royal decree-law that creates it immediately.

b) Parliamentary phase (Congress and Senate)

If an ordinary law or the Budget Law itself is chosen, the procedure is the general legislative initiative:

• Presentation of a bill (Government) or a bill proposal (parliamentary groups) in the Congress.
• Admission for processing and publication by the Board and the Official Gazette of the Cortes.
• General debate (if applicable): the general orientation of the text is discussed.
• Amendments to the articles: groups may:
  • Expand or restrict beneficiary groups.
  • Adjust the maximum guaranteed percentage or the overall volume of guarantees.
  • Introduce additional obligations of information, transparency, or evaluation.
• Competent committee (for example, Housing or Economy): debates and approves a report.
• Congress plenary: final debate and vote.
• Processing in the Senate: presentation of amendments and possible veto; the Congress can lift the veto or accept/reject the amendments.
• Sanction and publication in the BOE, entering into force on the scheduled date.

If the chosen route is the royal decree-law, the procedure is shortened:

• The Government approves the decree-law in the Council of Ministers and it enters into force upon publication in the BOE.
• Within a maximum of 30 days, the Congress debates it and may:
  • Ratify it (keep it in force).
  • Repeal it.
  • Or ratify it and agree to process it as a bill to introduce changes through amendments.

3. Budget articulation

The parliamentary core of a guarantee program is usually in the PGE:

• The Cortes approve each year the Budget law, which:
  • Sets ceilings for guarantees and warranties that the State can assume.
  • Includes credits for provisions or reserve funds linked to the program.
  • Determines, through additional provisions, key aspects of eligibility and limits.
• Significant modifications in volume or scope may require extraordinary credit laws or budget modifications, which also go through the Cortes.

4. Regulatory development after the law

Once Parliament has provided legal and budgetary coverage, the operational detail shifts back to the Executive:

• Royal decrees: usually set the regulatory framework of the program (application procedure, financial conditions, risk management, coordination with credit entities, etc.).
• Ministerial orders and resolutions of the State Secretariat or general directorates: specify forms, deadlines, bank agreement models, information and monitoring systems.
• In many cases, a managing body is designated (for example, a public business entity or a guarantee fund) whose actions are also regulated by regulation.

The regulatory margin is limited by what the legislator has decided: it cannot alter essential elements (object, basic recipients, global risk limits, nature of the guarantee), but it can organize practical execution and adapt it with some flexibility to market evolution.

5. Subsequent parliamentary control

Once underway, Parliament can control the program through:

• Questions and interpellations to the Government about its execution, social impact, and assumed risk.
• Appearances of ministers and senior officials to report.
• Reports on budget execution and from control bodies (Court of Auditors, AIReF), which may lead to debates and new legislative reforms.

In summary, the implementation of mortgage guarantee programs combines political decision by the Government, authorization and normative configuration by the Cortes (especially via PGE and ordinary laws), and broad regulatory development but subordinate to the parliamentary mandate.

According to regional legislation, the Community of Madrid has very broad powers in housing matters, allowing it to regulate land use planning and urbanism, design its own protected housing policy, and establish financing and support mechanisms, including instruments that affect access costs and certain aids linked to housing acquisition or use.

1. Statutory basis: exclusive competence in housing, territory, and urbanism

The starting point is the Statute of Autonomy of the Community of Madrid, approved by Organic Law 3/1983, of February 25, and amended by Organic Law 10/1994. In the article relating to the exclusive competences of the Community, it is established that:

• The Community of Madrid has exclusive competence in land use planning, urbanism, and housing (article 26.1.4 of the Statute, according to consolidated numbering). See the text in the BOE: Statute of Autonomy of the Community of Madrid.

This clause enables the Community to approve its own urban, land, and housing legislation, as well as to design and execute housing plans and aid programs in its territory, within the basic state framework.

2. Law 6/1997, on Public Protection of Housing

The Law 6/1997, of January 8, on Public Protection of Housing of the Community of Madrid is the core norm that structures the regional policy on protected housing: Law 6/1997.

• Its preamble recalls that the Community has "full competence in housing matters" according to its Statute and can allocate own resources to make effective the constitutional right to decent housing.
• It defines "housing with public protection" in the Community of Madrid, setting conditions of purpose, use, price, and quality, conditioning its qualification on the intervention of the regional Administration.
• It establishes that the Community can intervene in the promotion, construction, or financing of these homes, directly or through agreements with other Administrations or private entities.

From this Law derive two major blocks of competences:

• Normative capacity to define protected housing regimes (types, maximum areas, maximum prices, access requirements, etc.).
• Capacity to configure financial and subsidy instruments (qualified financing, subsidies, agreements with credit entities), which in practice include aids linked to the acquisition or use of protected housing.

3. Law 9/2001, on Land of the Community of Madrid

The Law 9/2001, of July 17, on Land of the Community of Madrid (partially amended but essentially in force) is the basic piece of competence in urbanism and land reservation: Law 9/2001.

• It orders the classification and qualification of land and designs the municipal urban planning system under regional supervision.
• It imposes structuring determinations that guarantee a mandatory land reservation for protected housing. In the consulted fragment, it is indicated that, on developable land, at least 50% of buildable homes must be subject to some public protection regime.

Through this law, the Community exercises its competence by configuring the urban conditions that make protected housing supply possible and, indirectly, reduce access costs (including purchase) through land reservations and limitations on use and price.

4. Specific rules on protected housing and aids

On this basis, the Community has approved specific regulations that specify its competences:

• Law 6/1997 and its regulatory development (among others, the Regulation of Housing with Public Protection approved by Decree 74/2009, modified by the Decree 59/2013) regulate types such as housing with public protection for rental, including the rent-to-own modality, setting access conditions and prices that directly affect the subsequent acquisition cost.
• The Law 9/2003, of March 26, on the sanctioning regime in protected housing matters (Law 9/2003) develops the regional sanctioning power against breaches in protected or qualified financing housing (price surcharges, sales or awards to persons not meeting requirements, etc.), strengthening control over the protected housing market and, therefore, over its acquisition price.
• The Law 9/2017, of July 3, on IBI compensation and measures in protected housing matters (Law 9/2017), expressly invoking article 26.1.4 of the Statute, establishes a non-tax mechanism to compensate the IBI impact on tenants of Social Housing Agency homes and sets rules on disposal and tenant guarantees. This law shows that the Community can articulate own economic measures that reduce the effective cost of protected housing and condition its transfer.

5. Specific scope in purchase aids

In summary, the Community of Madrid, based on its exclusive competence in housing and urbanism:

• Defines protected housing regimes and their maximum sale prices, which acts as a structural aid to purchase by limiting the price.
• Can establish and manage qualified financing and subsidy programs linked to the promotion, acquisition, or rehabilitation of protected housing, either with own funds or through the execution of state housing plans in its territory.
• Regulates contractual modalities such as rent-to-own, which defers the acquisition effort and allows imputing part of the rents to the final price.
• Exercises sanctioning and control powers over prices, awards, and transfers, protecting the protected housing buyer against overpricing and abuses.

The combination of these normative competences, land planning, and financial intervention configures the regional framework that allows the Community of Madrid to design and execute its own housing and access aid policies, including home purchase, especially in the field of protected housing.

With the public information available as of August 2026, it is not possible to know an aggregated and reliable number of mortgages signed in Spain in the last five years with LTV over 80% and that also have a public guarantee (State/ICO or regional programs). There is currently no official statistic that systematically crosses these two variables (LTV and public guarantee) for the entire market.

The main available statistical systems present several relevant limitations:

• The INE Mortgage Statistics provides monthly the number of mortgages on housing, the capital lent, the average amount, the average interest rate, and the distribution by fixed/variable type, among other variables, but does not break down:
  • the percentage of price financed (LTV), nor
  • whether the operation has a public guarantee or not.
  Therefore, it does not allow isolating mortgages with financing over 80% linked to State or autonomous community guarantees.
• The Notary and the College of Registrars publish some financing indicators, such as the average loan-to-price ratio (around 72.4% according to Demócrata based on notarial data) and the percentage of purchases financed with a mortgage, but again without systematically identifying which operations are covered by public guarantees.
• The Bank of Spain, in its financial stability reports, analyzes average LTV ratios of new mortgages and their evolution, but also does not offer a count of operations segmented by "with or without public guarantee."

On the guarantee side, identifiable programs exist, but their data are partial and fragmented:

• The State guarantee line managed by ICO for the purchase of first homes by young people and families with dependents, regulated by the Government in February 2024, has an allocation of 2.5 billion euros and a target of around 50,000 operations, according to official Moncloa notes (ICO guarantees for buying my first home and subsequent extensions). However:
  • a consolidated balance of mortgages actually formalized under this line is not yet published in the consulted documentation, and
  • the LTV detail of each operation is not reported, although by design the line allows the mortgage to reach up to 100% of the price or appraisal.
• Various autonomous communities have created young guarantee programs that precisely allow going from the standard 80% to 95% or even 100% financing:
  • Andalusia: the Garantía Vivienda Joven program has allowed 1,062 young people to buy their first home with regional guarantee in less than a year, mobilizing more than 117 million euros in mortgages, according to the Andalusian Government (note from 07/30/2024).
  • Basque Country: the GazteAval program totals 61 operations and 10.6 million euros since September 2025, allowing financing between 80% and 100% of the housing reference value (Basque Government).
  • Galicia, Balearic Islands, Castilla y León, and other regions also have young guarantee lines that cover the additional 15%-20% over the 80% bank financing, but the located press releases report calls, budgets, and, in some cases, applications, not a harmonized accumulated total of formally mortgaged operations.

Besides the lack of a single source, there is a second methodological difficulty: many of these guarantee lines are very recent (the ICO state line starts in 2024 and has been extended until the end of 2027, and several regional ones have been approved between 2023 and 2025). This means that, even having the data, they would not cover the full five years you ask about.

In summary, to date only the following can be offered:

• Orders of magnitude and objectives (for example, the ~50,000 loans the Government expects to facilitate with the ICO guarantee line, or the hundreds/thousands of beneficiaries of some regional programs), and
• isolated figures from specific programs (1,062 beneficiaries in Andalusia, 61 operations in GazteAval, etc.).

But there is no official aggregated statistic that allows answering precisely how many mortgages with LTV over 80% and public guarantee have been formalized in Spain in the last five years. Obtaining microdata from financial entities, crossed with ICO and autonomous community information, could build a robust estimate, but that exercise is not currently published systematically by any institution.

If you are interested, the best practical approach right now is:

• Start from the target of 50,000 operations of the ICO line throughout its validity,
• add the figures communicated by the main regional programs (which, in view of the data, are in the order of thousands of additional operations, not hundreds of thousands), and
• be clear that, even so, we would still be talking about a partial and unofficial approximation, without precise disaggregation by LTV.