The Bank of Spain has confirmed that the Euribor registered a monthly rate of 3.671% in February, which represents a new rise compared to the 3.609% registered in the month of January and an increase compared to the 3.534% observed a year before. Debtors who have to review their mortgage taking February’s Euribor data as a reference will experience the lowest increase in prices in almost two years, since the differential with respect to February 2023 is only 13.7 basis points. In January, this differential was 27.2 basis points.
During the second half of 2022 and the first half of 2023, with the change in monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB), there was a very rapid rise in the Euribor, registering interannual increases in prices that exceeded 380 basis points (3.8 points percentages). In this way, although the reference rate will advance slightly in February compared to January, it is still below the maximums of 4.15% registered during the summer of last year.
According to the Mortgage Director of the iAhorro mortgage comparator and advisor, Simone Colombelli, the Euribor is a “volatile” indicator and that it rises or falls a little each month is to be expected. “What we do not expect is for it to go back above the 4% barrier or to suddenly drop to levels closer to 3%; this would not be logical unless an unexpected macroeconomic change occurs (a war, a pandemic , a drop in official interest rates…)”, he indicated.
The February data implies that for a variable rate model mortgage, the increase in the payment would be about 12 euros per month. This calculation, prepared by Europa Press, assumes an outstanding capital of 150,000 euros and a residual term of 30 years, with a differential of 0.99% plus the Euribor. The increases for real mortgages would be lower, since in this example the entire capital of the mortgage is accounted for with the entire term still to be met. With the amortization system used in Spain, the first years of installments are when more interest is paid, so more mature mortgages would face smaller increases in their installments. “Although the Euribor has risen slightly, if we look at its long-term evolution, we are still in a moment of stability within the decline that this indicator is expected to register,” Colombelli added.
For the analyst of the comparator HelpMyCash, Miquel Riera, “the market was overly optimistic when it expected a prompt lowering of the ECB’s rates” and that is why the Euribor reached very close to 3.5%. “In February, however, it has had to adjust its forecasts to reality and that explains why this index has risen slightly,” he assured. The spokesperson for the Kelisto comparator, Estefanía González, agrees with Riera. “The data show that the euphoria with which 2023 ended and 2024 began – with the expectation of a possible rate cut in March – is beginning to fade and that the markets are beginning to trust the successive warnings from the European Central Bank,” he said. she added.
2024-03-02 15:20:56
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