The real estate sector begins to take steps towards its recovery from the coronavirus crisis. While the prices of rent and sale of housing continue to evolve mainly upwards after suffering an unprecedented collapse in demand during the pandemic, the mortgage firm is reactivated strongly in the first months of 2021, both in the number of loans granted to the purchase of a home and the volume of capital earmarked for these loans.
Thus, the latest official statistic of mortgages, corresponding to April, reflects that the total of mortgaged homes in this month reached 31,900, which is 32% more than in the same month of the previous year, although it is 13.5% less than those registered in March of 2021 and the accumulated for the first 4 months of the year is 3 tenths below that recorded in the same period of the previous year.
In the same way, the volume of mortgaged capital for homes is 4,400 million euros, 47.2% more than in April 2020, but, again, it is more than 12 percentage points behind the total of funds allocated to this type of credit in March and 1.7 points of the accumulated of the first 4 months of 2020, which translates into a decrease with respect to the previous month and at the beginning of the year that has not yet reached the levels of the beginning of the pandemic.
However, the comparison with 2020 does not reflect the degree of recovery of mortgages, given that 12 months ago the market was practically paralyzed by the state of alarm and home confinement measures. Thus, using the 2019 figures, it is possible to compare the sector data with a benchmark prior to the impact of the coronavirus and the approval of the new mortgage law in June 2 years ago.
In this way, the volume of new mortgages in April this year is 32% higher than in 2020, but it is also 10% above April 2019, as highlighted by Business Insider España Ferran Font, Director of Studies at Pisos.com. Meanwhile, the capital loaned has grown by almost 23% in the last 2 years, going from 3,600 million euros in April 2019 to 4,450 million in the fourth month of 2021.
Which communities have recovered the rhythm of granting mortgages
“There are some communities, for example Madrid and Catalonia, which are locomotive in that sense, they are growing around 15% compared to 2 years ago, however, those markets that are holding back this recovery or that are showing figures not so The islands are positive compared to 2 years ago, we are talking about the Balearic Islands, which falls by 21%, like the Canary Islands, which is around a fall of 17% “, explains Font.
The data referred to by the Director of Studies of Pisos.com on the evolution of the number of mortgages on homes formalized between April 2019 and the same month of this year is reflected in the following graph, which shows that Extremadura is the community where loans for the purchase of a home have grown the most in the last 2 years, with 57%, going from 434 mortgages in 2019 to 685 2 months ago.
Thus, the greatest increases in total mortgages are concentrated in communities in which a relatively low number of these types of loans have been granted, such as Cantabria or Murcia, with less than 1,000 mortgages formalized last April, or Galicia and Castilla y León, with around 1,200. Meanwhile, autonomies that represent a greater proportion of the mortgage pie, such as Andalusia or, to a lesser extent, the Basque Country, show growth below the state average.
Meanwhile, as Ferran Font indicates, The Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands are among the 5 communities where fewer mortgages were granted in April 2021 than 24 months before, with falls of 15.8% and 21%, respectively, while the greatest decline compared to 2019 is recorded in Navarra, with more than 30% fewer credits for the purchase of a home, going from 510 in 2019 to 350 this year.
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On the other hand, comparing the figures for April 2021 with those of 12 months ago, the result is less revealing, given that all the autonomous regions have formalized more mortgages on homes than during the first month of the pandemic, with percentages ranging between 105 % growth of Extremadura to the meager 7.8% registered in the Balearic Islands.
In which communities the capital allocated to new mortgages grows the most compared to 2019
Regarding the second mortgage factor, the volume of capital borrowed to formalize these mortgages, the picture is even clearer, since only in 3 communities the money destined to finance house purchases is lower than that registered 2 years ago. This is the case of Navarra, Aragón and the Canary Islands, which are also among the 5 autonomous regions in which the volume of mortgages granted has not been recovered.
As shown in the previous graph, the first positions in terms of the increase in capital destined for mortgages in the fourth month of the year compared to 2019 do not vary, with Extremadura, Cantabria and Murcia in the first 3 positions, with increases between 70% and 49%, although these 3 autonomies are among those in which the least volume of capital has been granted due to the fact that fewer mortgages have been made than in communities with a greater population weight.
Meanwhile, the main real estate markets in the country are among the autonomies that have grown the most in funds earmarked for home purchase loans, with the Community of Madrid advancing 38% compared to April 2019 and Catalonia growing 31%, while in the autonomy that has granted the most mortgages, Andalusia, the capital loaned has increased by just 5% in the last 2 years.
In fact, comparing the volume of funds provided for mortgages by autonomies, it is striking that the capital granted in Madrid is almost double that of Andalusia, despite the fact that 250 fewer mortgages have been formalized in the Madrid community than in Andalusia, which reflects the real estate price gap that exists between both territories.
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