MADRID, 31 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The 12-month Euribor registered a monthly average of 2.629% in October, reaching its highest level since December 2008, when it stood at 3.452%, according to data consulted by Europa Press.
This Monday the Euribor has climbed again to 2.630% in its daily rate, after last Friday it stood at 2.567%. However, the indicator remains below the level of 2.7% that it reached during several days of the month, spurred by the expectation of a new rate hike by the European Central Bank (ECB).
This speculation finally materialized last Thursday, when the central bank announced its agreement to apply a new rate hike of 75 basis points, which means raising them to 2%. Given this situation, the index to which the majority of variable rate mortgages in Spain are referenced has remained in a range between 2.5% and 2.6%.
The director of mortgages at the comparator iAhorro, Simone Colombelli, points out that growth in October “has slowed down”. “Between August and September, the increase was almost one point and this month it has dropped to 0.393 points. If we look at the trend of other years, at the end of the year the Euribor always moderated its growth a bit,” she explains. However, she is cautious in indicating that this moderation may not be so evident “especially if the ECB continues to raise rates between now and December.”
If the monthly settlement is confirmed at this level, a person who has contracted a 30-year variable mortgage of 150,000 euros and with a differential of 0.99% plus Euribor will suffer an increase in their mortgage payment of around 230 euros, that is, would go from paying 450 euros per month to paying 680 euros from the review, which is equivalent to an increase of 2,800 euros per year.
For iAhorro, the rate hike announced yesterday by the ECB “does nothing more than feed the Euribor”, which could end the year between 3.2% and 3.5%. However, Colombelli shows his prudence by assuring that “it is very difficult to make an accurate prediction because each month surprises us more than the previous one.”
iAhorro points out that, with this average Euribor level of 2.626% and bank spreads of around 0.80%, interest rates on variable mortgages are around 3.5%, which has also triggered fixed-rate mortgages. In this way, some banks would already place the fixed TIN above 3%, a situation that could intensify in the coming months.
“In six, seven or eight months things will get worse, I have no doubt. Our forecast is that in the spring of next year the fixed rate will worsen considerably if the Euribor continues to rise”, explains the director of mortgages of the comparator.
Analysts at the HelpMyCash.com financial comparator believe that the Euribor will reach 3% before the end of the year. In this regard, they explain that this index – which represents the average interest rate at which banks lend money to each other and which “goes up if it costs more for entities to finance themselves through the ECB” – is usually maintained between 0.5 and one point above the interest rate set by the central bank.
“When this organization intends to raise them, as is the case now, that difference widens, since the banks transfer this future increase to the interest on their interbank loans. For this reason, it is more than likely that this index will reach 3% before the end of the year and that it remains at very high values in 2023”, the experts of the comparator transfer.
The XTB analyst, Joaquín Robles, points out that high inflation and the successive rises in interest rates increase the fear among investors of a new economic recession in Europe. In recent days, the market speculates on the possibility that the central banks will soften the rate hikes as of 2023, but Robles points out that this may not be the case with the ECB, since inflation “has not yet shown signs” of moderate, as it has done in other geographies; for example, in the United States.
