Sharp decrease in new mortgages this year

Far fewer people took out a mortgage in the first half of this year, the Land Registry reported. They also borrowed much less money for this compared to the same period last year. The decrease is mainly due to the sharply increased mortgage interest rates, the Land Registry said.

With a high mortgage interest rate, home buyers can borrow less money than when the interest rate is low. According to the Land Registry, 40 percent fewer mortgages were taken out in January to June compared to the first half of last year. It concerns all types of mortgages, so this also includes the significantly reduced group of people who refinance their mortgages.

The number of mortgages taken out to purchase a new home was 16 percent lower in the first half of this year than in the same period a year earlier. However, according to the Land Registry, the share of first-time buyers is increasing.

The amount of all mortgages together, the mortgage sum, was 43 percent lower than a year earlier. In the first half of last year, the mortgage amount was still 85.3 billion euros. According to the Land Registry, that fell to 48.6 billion euros in the first six months of this year.

However, home buyers borrowed a large part of the total purchase amount for the first time in years, especially first-time buyers. On average, 86.9 percent of the purchase amount was borrowed in the first half of this year. That was still 85.5 percent a year earlier. People moving from one owner-occupied home to another paid a slightly larger part of their new home with their own money.