Press release

In Aggregate Terms Interest Rates on Mortgages Continue to Decrease in Europe

23 January 2017

The European Mortgage Federation (EMF) has today published its Quarterly Review of European Mortgage Markets for the third quarter (Q3) of 2016.

Produced in cooperation with the Federation’s national experts, the Quarterly Review presents the latest short-term developments in mortgage and housing markets across the EU. The publication provides expert analytical commentary together with data tables and charts on the following key indicators:

 Mortgage interest rates;

 Total outstanding residential mortgage lending;

 Gross and net residential mortgage lending; and

 Nominal house price indices.

What is more, this edition of the Quarterly Review includes some new features: in addition to an update of the thresholds in the existing charts relating to house prices, a new chart showing the boxplots of the quarter on quarter growth distribution of house prices in the sample has been added.

Overview of Q3 2016:

In light of the ongoing political uncertainty both within and outside Europe, the third quarter of 2016 has provided an aggregate housing and mortgage market picture which is in line with the previous quarters of 2016. In the EU house prices continued their upwards trend, on an aggregate level, while the outstanding mortgage lending figure in our sample, after having reached the peak at the end of 2015, slightly contracted by 1.9% since then. Interest rates continued their downward path as well and the unweighted average rate of our sample lies for the first time below 2.5%.

Luca Bertalot, EMF-ECBC Secretary General

The full Quarterly Review – Q3 2016 and the archive of previous editions (back to Q3 1998) are available on the EMF website here.