The
ECB
's monetary tightening shatters the dream of many young people and families of buying a house.
With interest rates on mortgages having tripled in the last two years, the number of Italians who do not want to get into debt is increasing while real estate sales are in free fall.
It will now be fundamental for banks and also for families that the ECB "accelerates the start of the process of reducing the cost of money", says
Lando Maria Sileoni
, general secretary of
Fabi
.
Fabi photographs the effects of the monetary tightening on mortgages and the real estate market in an analysis that compares the situation of the last three years.
At the end of December last year
, with the rise in the cost of money, brought to 4.5% by the ECB, the average interest applied to real estate loans had reached
4.40%
, i.e. exactly three times higher than 1. 45% in January 2022, the lowest level in recent years.
Interest on mortgages then rose already during the first half of 2022, with the market which, as a matter of practice, anticipated the central bank's decisions.
Further, important increases arrived during 2023
: 3.68% in January and 4.02% in March, with the peak reached in November and rates reaching 4.61%, before falling back to 4.40% in December and 3.99% last January.
It remains to be understood whether the "descent of the last two months is the beginning of a structural path and not an episodic fact", explains Fabi.
A scenario that has led to a reduction from 50% to 41% in the share of people who go into debt to buy a property
.
In fact, during 2023, there will be a decline in the stock of mortgages of 2.3 billion euros (192 million per month on average) after the increase of over 35 billion recorded in the previous two years, thanks to the 18.3 billion in more in 2021 and the growth of 17 billion achieved in 2022.
The easing of monetary policy, now expected by most observers, is "fundamental precisely to put the banks back in a position as soon as possible to be able to support the real estate market again. For Italy it means giving oxygen back to a fundamental piece of our economy which is worth several points of GDP, if we count all the sectors connected to buying and selling and all the so-called related industries", adds Sileoni.
The third quarter of 2023 confirmed the sharp decline in sales of residential properties in Italy
, which began in the fourth quarter of 2022, after continuous and accelerated growth since 2020. The decline recorded in the first nine months of 2023 involves the entire territory and every type of home.
The number of sales at the end of September 2023 stood at 507,879, compared to the 576,115 recorded in the same period of 2022, with a reduction of 11.8%.
The decline suffered by sales of new homes (-15.9%) is very significant.
The data demonstrate that the "delicate balance between interest rates and inflation - concludes the analysis - has put Italians' borrowing capacity to the test and dragged investment in real estate downwards".
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