The reign of fixed mortgages has lasted very little, although it has been very intense, accounting for 73.8% of the totals during the month of February of last year. Unfortunately, things have changed a lot since then and we have gone from a Euribor of -0.335% that month to around 4% today.
During these last few months, many have been mortgaged at a variable rate who, seeing what was coming their way, have been quick to change their mortgage to a fixed one. The banks were caught a bit off guard since their commercial force was still focused on fixed mortgages since that nobody expected this rush of the Euribor that we have experienced.
The logical step for financial institutions was make fixed mortgages more expensive as well as make variable ones slightly cheaper so that clients contract the one that offers the least risk to the banks and this is the current trend that in some cases is more extreme, directly eliminating fixed mortgages from their commercial offer and adding other alternatives such as mixed mortgages.
It is enough to look at the current offers to realize that fixed mortgages are no longer profitable and their presence is merely testimonial, for example in BBVA the APR is close to 4.5% and in the case of Santander the APR exceeds 5.2%. The Euribor would have to rise a lot to compensate for a mortgage of this style at this time, especially considering that we could have already seen the Euribor ceiling in March.
What does seem clear is that the mortgage market continues to be in very good health, according to INE data we are facing the best figures of the last three years after the downturn experienced in December.
