Czech mortgage market grows by 3.2% in Q1-3

Prague, Oct 25 (CTK) - Czech banks granted 53,047 mortgage loans worth almost Kc88bn to households in the first three quarters of this year, up by 3.2 percent on the year, according to the Local Development Ministry's statistics.

The growth on the mortgage market is thus slowing down as in the first quarter of the year the market rose by over a fifth year on year and in the first half by 6 percent.

Overall, banks provided 53,842 mortgages for Kc98.4bn to households, companies and municipalities in Q1-3 this year, the number growing by 3 percent but the volume down by more than Kc2bn in annual terms.

Interest in mortgage loans thus far this year has been driven by favourable interest rates. The average interest rate fell to 3.46 percent in September and was the lowest since the start of the indicator's monitoring.

The previous lowest interest rates of 3.55 percent were reported in August. The Fincentrum Hypoindex has been monitoring average interest rates of all types of mortgages since 2003.

The mortgage market rose by 40 percent last year. Banks provided 71,088 mortgage loans for Kc119bn to households.

Mortgage loans provided to households (in Kc bn):

2001 14.728
2002 22.532
2003 36.212
2004 51.959
2005 72.069
2006 100.84
2007 142.289
2008 120.090
2009 73.851
2010 84.773
Q3 2011 84.867
2011 119.077
Q3 2012 87.588

Source: Local Development Ministry