February Mortgages

The INE has released February Spanish residential mortgage numbers. They are best described as 'stagnant'. 12-month averages of the three series - number of mortgages, total loaned and average loaned - are very slightly positive in the first two cases and very slightly negative in the last.

Of general interest to those wishing to find some indication of the fate of housing prices from these statistics, it is worth noting that the average amount loaned is currently at 78% of cycle peaks, whilst the number of mortgages is at 38% and total loaned at 48%. Taking it is as a given that few are the cases in which more than 80% of assessed value is loaned the 22% drop in the average loaned leads us to believe that reports of the limited effect on prices from the serious downturn attested to by the other two measures are not far off the mark.

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