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.
By Community
Andalucia, Madrid and Catalonia registered the highest amount of new mortgages with 4,684, 3,976 and 3,857 new mortgages, respectively.
By growth, the winning communities were Castilla-La-Mancha which saw a 30.4% increase, followed by Madrid with 22.9% more mortgages and Andalucia with 22.2% more than in January last year.
When comparing communities based on the total amount of borrowed capital Madrid easily dominates with 576.9 million euros lent out during January. Catalonia followed with 457.2 million and Andalucia with 411.8 million Euros.
The largest monthly variation recorded, when compared to the previous month (Dec 2015), was Castilla y León which saw an increase of 53%, while the number of mortgages written in Castilla-La Mancha increased 43.6%.
The only two communities that recorded a fall in the number of mortgages written were Cantabria (-10.9%) and Galicia (-8.0%).
Read the full report here: INE (in Spanish).