Czech mortgage rates continued to fall in February as banks gave out the 30 billion CZK worth of mortgages, the largest volume ever recorded, Novinky reports.
January was already a strong month with 25 billion CZK worth of mortgages, only for February to break the 2016 record with 30 billion CZK. The average rate fell once more to 1.93%.
Jiří Sýkora of Fincentrum and Swiss Life Select said that the number of mortgages is not growing as fast as the volume of mortgages, implying a heavy demand for debt.
“In the second month of the year, banks gave out a total of 9,948 mortgages, which is 1,568 more than January and 2,856 more than 2020. However, the number of provided mortgages isn’t growing as fast as the volume, which is reflected in the average amount of mortgages, which for the first time has exceeded 3 million CZK.
The average mortgage is now 3,006,901 CZK, 30,555 CZK higher than in January.
According to those in the industry, this may be very bottom of the Czech mortgage market, as a few banks have already started raising their rates. Both ČSOB and Airbank have raised their rates by 0.2%.
Sýkora told Novinky that other banks will probably follow suit and the average interest rate will go from today’s rate of 1.93%, to somewhere in the 2.5%-3% range.
“Other banks are still waiting, but we can expect that they’ll probably end up raising mortgage rates soon and the average interest rate will probably go up for the month of March.
