The Euribor continues to make mortgages more expensive, one of the consequences of the effects of the war in the Middle East. This indicator, which is the benchmark for variable-interest home loans, but also affects new ones entering the market, closed March at an average of 2.565%, with the largest monthly increase in three years after reaching 2.870% on the last day of the month. As a consequence of this trend, holders of variable-interest mortgages with annual reviews will suffer the first increase in their installments since April 2024 because this month's Euribor is higher than that of a year ago, which was 2.398%.

The Catalan Finance Institute (ICF), the public bank of the Generalitat, has granted to date 846 loans to young people aged 18 to 35 to obtain the down payment for an apartment. The average granted is 36,332 euros and an average housing price of 189,908 euros with an average age of beneficiaries of 29.4 years, according to data presented by the Secretary General of Economy and President of the ICF's governing board, Juli Fernández, and the entity's CEO, Vanessa Servera.

The US and Israeli attacks on Iran are already impacting people's wallets. The situation will worsen the longer the conflict lasts and the longer it takes to resolve the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil and gas passes. "Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow, but we do know that the risk is very high," says Javier Díaz-Giménez, a professor at IESE Business School. The problem is that we are in a context of uncertainty and volatility, adds Pedro Aznar, an economics professor at ESADE Business School.

The armed conflict in the Middle East also has financial repercussions. The Euribor, the benchmark for variable-rate mortgages, registered its largest daily increase in almost 20 years on Tuesday. This one-year indicator climbed to 2.552%, an increase of 0.185 percentage points. Normally, this benchmark fluctuates by only a few thousandths of a point daily, but this time it experienced a 7.8% rise in a single day.

The Catalan mortgage market closed 2025 with an upward surge, which may signal a change in the economic cycle. The number of mortgages granted in December reached 6,464, 25% more than a year earlier and also the highest figure since December 2009. Meanwhile, the price of these mortgages, measured by the average annual interest rate, fell after soaring in November.

For the four largest banks in Spain, 2025 has been a year of positive signs. In fact—with the exception of Banco Sabadell—CaixaBank, Banco Santander, and BBVA have once again posted record profits, mostly due to strong net interest margins and increased fee income. In total, the four institutions They add up to a historic benefit of 32.278 billion euros throughout the year. If the profits of Bankinter and Unicaja are added to that figure, the final figure is 34 billion euros.

Several banks have announced that they will tighten mortgage conditions throughout 2026. Prices will rise, and lending standards will be stricter. This shift comes after a record-breaking 2025. The official explanation cites prudence and the need to avoid future risks in the real estate market.

The mortgage market maintains its momentum and continues to show very high numbers. While mortgage originations in Catalonia have grown at a double-digit rate for almost all of 2025, registering the largest increase in October (+0.26%), November recovered some of the lost momentum: the number of mortgages grew by 7.45%, reaching 7. Following the most dynamic October in the last eighteen years, November has now seen the highest activity in the last nineteen. The Catalan mortgage market has now experienced seventeen consecutive months of growth.

Bankinter's CEO, Gloria Ortiz, continues to see "irrationality" in the mortgage market and has once again ruled out entering into any kind of price war for home loans. During the presentation of the 2025 results, in which the bank surpassed €1 billion in profit for the first time, she denounced that some institutions are selling mortgages at 2% or 2.20% when the curve swap The 30-year yield is currently around 3%.

Mortgage lending in Catalonia reached a new high in October, with 9,025 mortgage loans, the highest figure recorded for that month since 2007. However, this growth in the number of mortgages, sustained uninterrupted for the past 16 months, shows the first signs of decline. Since July 2014, every month has seen double-digit annual growth – the largest increase was in October of last year, with a rise of 52.7% – and now the number of mortgage loans has grown by only 1.3% compared to October of last year.

As Spain prepares to close a record year for mortgage signings, potentially exceeding 500,000 across the country—levels not seen in fifteen years—a changing cycle is beginning with rising interest rates. "Most financial institutions are raising interest rates on home loans" because no further rate cuts are expected in the short term from the European Central Bank (ECB), explains the comparison website HelpMyCash.

After Malta, Spain has the cheapest mortgages in the eurozone. This is one of the factors contributing to the constant rise in housing prices, as supply is growing at a much slower pace than demand. Comparing the average interest rate for home purchases in August, the latest published figure for Spain is 2.69%, well below the eurozone average of 3.31% and the rates in countries like Germany (3.71%), France (3.01%), and Italy (3.28%). Demand for home loans is growing rapidly, according to the latest Bank of Spain survey for the second quarter.

The surge in the home sales market in Catalonia has encountered the usual slowdown in activity in August, which this year has broken a 14-month upward trend. However, the same has not been true for mortgage signings, which not only have seen a 15-month rise in growth but have also recorded their best growth in a single August since 2010.

September ends with the second consecutive increase in the Euribor and the third of the year (the other was in January), but that won't mean that variable-rate mortgages, those that are indexed, will become more expensive. The one-year daily Euribor, the indicator used by most variable-rate home loans, stood at 2.193% this Tuesday, bringing the average for the month to 2.172%, higher than August's (2.114%).

The one-year Euribor, the main benchmark for variable-rate mortgages, registered its first increase since January in August, closing at an average of 2.114%, compared to 2.079% in July. However, variable-rate loans for home purchases will continue to decline, as this benchmark is still below what it was a year ago (3.166%). With this trend, with this Friday's index at 2.119%, it is expected that the high rate of mortgage granting, which reached its highest level in fifteen years, will continue.

The word bubble Applied to housing, this creates fear. It reminds us of what we experienced seventeen years ago. Back then, the issue was financial, and the bubble of over-indebtedness burst, resulting in a demand that, in many cases, wasn't sufficiently solvent. Today, we can use the expression because we're not in that situation. As some experts claim, the current bubble It's about prices, meaning that the price per square meter is completely disconnected from income, wages, and economic growth. Its driving forces are demographic pressure, speculative investment, and the fall in credit prices.

The number of mortgages signed in Catalonia fell for the first time in April, after three consecutive months of increases. However, the fourth month of this year has not been a bad month for the mortgage market, quite the opposite: so many mortgages have not been signed in April since 2010, when housing demand peaked at the bursting of the real estate bubble two years earlier.

The one-year Euribor, the benchmark for variable-rate mortgages, closed May at an average of 2.081%, compared to 2.143% in April. It thus falls to the level of August 2022, just months after emerging from the negative territory it had held for six years. The fall in this index, which could continue to fall below 2% by the end of the year, according to expert estimates, has the positive effect of lowering the payments for those linked to it and also the interest rate at which new loans are offered. The most immediate effect is that a typical 25-year mortgage of €156,698 (the one collected by the National Statistics Institute for March) with a spread of the Euribor plus one percentage point, will go from having a monthly payment of €887.07 to €749.70, a reduction of €1,648.44.

Indicators of imbalances linked to real housing prices grew in 2024, which means that real estate overvaluation has increased. This is one of the conclusions drawn from the latest Financial Stability Report Prepared twice a year, in spring and winter, by the Bank of Spain (BdE). The institution now led by former Socialist minister José Luis Escrivá points out that the increase in demand for mortgage loans and a more "rigid" supply in the residential market is what has led to this scenario of rising housing prices. Despite posing a risk, the entity still views it with caution: "The [indicators of] imbalances have grown, but remain at moderate levels," noted the Director General of Financial Stability, Daniel Pérez Cid, during the informative presentation of the document this Tuesday.

Home sales soared 52.3% in March compared to the same month last year, reaching 10,345 transactions in Catalonia, according to provisional data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) published this Friday. This is the best figure for the third month of the year since 2007, the same year the historical series began and just before the real estate bubble burst. Across the country, home sales increased, although less so in Catalonia, by 40.6%, with 62,808 transactions, also the highest volume for a month of March since 2007. In the first quarter as a whole, Catalonia saw 29,782 transactions, 23% more than in the same quarter, and 183,140 homes, a 20.7% increase.