Retroactive Loan Agreement Changes and Austrian Borrowers: What You Need to Know

The ÖVP is rightly against the idea of ​​retroactively changing loan agreements. What is worrying, however, is that people want to “give a hand” to those affected.

Last Thursday brought good – or at least not bad – news to thousands of Austrians. For the second time in a row, the ECB left interest rates on pause and did not raise key interest rates any further. According to statements by National Bank Governor Robert Holzmann, the probability that the interest rate peak has been reached has now increased significantly. However, it will probably take months before interest rates fall again. Even then, things are likely to go downhill in much smaller steps than the increase over the past year and a half.

This development put many borrowers in Austria in a difficult situation. Because when they buy their apartment or house, they rely on a variable-interest loan. Such a system was extremely cheap in times of zero interest rates and enabled financing costs to be lower than ever before. However, these loans carried the risk of rising interest rates. The supervisory authority knew this, which is why it regularly warned against it. The banks knew this and were obliged to point this out in their advice (how clearly this was done in practice is another matter). And the borrowers should have known that too. Some people deliberately chose variable loans because they speculated that interest rates would remain permanently low. Others didn’t understand the whole thing, but still resorted to a variable loan because it was cheaper. And they also entered into interest rate speculation.

2023-12-18 16:22:44
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