The Reactivation of the mortgage market affects the banking offensive: the war to capture the best operations has been fueled while, in a certain way, the rivalry in the so-called catalog offers that are accessible to any citizen subsides because there are more operations for all entities. The contest is more lively for the most sought-after clients. Those with upper-middle income and good solvency profiles, currently find interest rates close to or even lower than 2% TIN on fixed rate mortgages –not including the commissions associated with the cross-selling of products that the APR does include. This is an interest rate lower than the 2.4% set by the Euribor and they achieve it in bilateral negotiations with the bank or by relying on specialist intermediaries, as explained to elEconomista.es different financial brokers.
In fixed mortgage, “the interest rate below 2 or around 2 is reserved for mortgages above 300,000 euros, with financing below 80% of appraisal value and with a low debt rate,” says Santiago Cruz, mortgage consultant and CEO of Ibercredit.
“The client that all entities want is the personal banking client. He is a client, in addition, who has a dominant position in the negotiation and knows it,” he adds, alluding to the fact that entities have begun to offer mortgages with tailored products for these profiles compared to the traditional one. package designed as an immutable catalog of products to reduce the final interest on the loan.
“Today you can reach the TIN with the maximum bonus without taking out risk products, just home insurance. Before, life insurance and accident insurance were necessary to reach the maximum bonus,” he notes.
Fight in private banking profile
“From the Kelisto broker we are obtaining fixed mortgages that are around 2% or that can even go below that figure in very good profilesa very notable difference if compared with the price of the best “standard” on the market (and even more so, with the average, which exceeds 2.9% TIN)”, confirms Estefanía González, spokesperson for Kelisto.es. In 2025 sees it feasible to see additional reductions between 5 and 10% in view of the expectation that the ECB will cut rates to 2% “It would not be strange to see the average interest on fixed mortgages hovering around 2%. 2.5% on standard offers, which means that “We could see the best offers on the market at 2.2%-2.3% TIN and that, by negotiating, we could reach rates of 1.5-1.7% TIN”he infers.
In iAhorro loans with the best fixed prices are closing at an average of 2.17% TINcompared to 2.53% at the start of 2024 or the 3.30% estimated by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) for the set of operations signed in October – latest figure published -. “In commercial offer (catalog), we started the year very close to three and a half in a 30-year fixed rate. Now we are more around 2.8-2.6% in commercial offer. What has happened in the negotiations? In negotiations, the rate is usually 0.5-0.8 below or, in some cases, even one point below in very very good profiles. And now we can find the fixed rate around 2%,” he agrees.
“The fixed mortgage sector has been the most affected by these reductions. In fact, we consider that a price war has been fought in that area; especially during the last quarter. According to our data, The average interest on fixed-rate mortgage offers has gone from 3.40% at the beginning of the year to 2.80% currently. And some banks even offer rates of around 2.50% or less,” says Miquel Riera, mortgage specialist at the comparator HelpMyCash.
The fight for the most solvent user or with medium-high income becomes important in the current scenario of falling rates, where a good number of entities have precisely focused on growing in the personal and private banking segment and in businesses that generate commissions like asset management.
New adjustments in 2025
The vertical increase in rates by the European Central Bank (ECB), which escalated the rate from 0% to 4.5% in just over a year and a half, dried up the demand for loans and the new mortgage concessions reached chain falls of more than 18% during some months of 2023. Families chose to delay the purchase of a home due to the sudden increase in the cost of financing and the lack of visibility on the evolution of monetary policy, encouraging a strong commercial offensive by the banks in the last months of 2023 to scratch the scarce business and cover budgets.
With the subsequent cut in the price of money, demand has resurfaced, appeasing the strong need that banks had to lower their supply in order to compete for operations in general. The bank has signed mortgages worth 52,191 million euros between January and October, an amount 13.20% higher than the same period last year, when the figure plummeted by 15.24%.
That there is more business takes pressure off the need to compete on prices to close operations, but experts expect new adjustments to the TINs in January. The market discounts that the ECB will then lower rates again and apply successive reductions until the end of 2025 with the price of money at 2% compared to the current 3%. Analysts expect the fixed rate mortgage to gain prominence to the detriment of the mixed rate that has reigned in recent years and, above all, the variable rate. The latter are, in fact, the least in demand despite the fact that numerous “catalogue” offers offer a differential of less than 0.50% over the Euribor.
Only Malta offers cheaper loans in the EU
The strong commercial rivalry between banks makes Spain has the cheapest mortgage offers in the euro zone after Malta. The average loan price It stood at 3.20% here in October, a figure that only exceeds the 1.81% in Malta, and is at a distance from 3.50% in the euro area; and from countries such as France and Italy (3.27% in both cases), Portugal (3.50%) or Germany (3.65%).
The figures come from the statistics of the European Central Bank (ECB), which does not break down by type of product or by TIN or APR (it includes the commissions of the different products contracted with the loan to lower the interest). Regardless of these factors, it reveals that the price in Spain fell by 70 basis points in one year compared to 3.9% in October 2023; an effort greater than the 49 points of the euro zone.
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