Despite the number of property sales falling slightly at the start of the year, when compared to last year, the number of new mortgages written in Spain increased in January by over 10% with 23,275 new mortgages recorded.
Also on the increase is the average amount of the mortgages written which increased by 14.2% compared to January 2015, to stand at 133,461 Euros.
The total value of mortgages written on urban properties amounted to 4,229.4 million Euros, representing a 16.3% increase over the previous year. Of those, the amount borrowed against residential property increased by 10.8% to 2,459.7 million Euros. Mortgages on residential properties accounted for 55.3% of capital borrowed in January.
Interest Rates
The majority of new mortgages written in January (89.8%) were variable rate mortgages, compared to only 10.2% on a fixed rate. In 94% of cases interest was based on the Euribor rate which has been consistently low in recent months.
The average rate of interest applied to new mortgages in January was 3.21% with the average term being 22 years. On residential property the average rate was 3.27%, representing a slight fall of 0.4% compared to January 2015.
