Claire Wilson
OVER half a million Spaniards have mortgages that have a greater value than the property they used the loan to purchase.
This means that If they lose their home, they would still be indebted to the bank, according to financial comparison site Kelisto.es.
It is a situation that the company predicts will get worse, and a trend which has increased from affecting 0.3% of mortgage holders to 9.5% in the past five years.
Estefanía González , responsible for personal finances at Kelisto, said: “The number of people affected has not stopped growing.
“The most significant increase occurred in 2011, when the number of “bubble” mortgages grew a spectacular 847% over the previous year.
“In terms of money, the estimated figure has been put at 13 billion euro, with the estimated average difference in the value of the mortgage against the value of the property being in the region of 22,216 euro. This is based on an average mortgage of just over 100,000 euro.
Meanwhile, the average price of housing in Spain has fallen by 38.5% from 245,313 euro in 2007 to 150,787 euro in 2013.
Homeowners in Catalonia and Madrid are the most affected by the phenomenon, with housing valuations falling 47.2% and 43.4% respectively.
Of the total 581,441 homes that were worth less than their loans in 2013, 42.6% were concentrated in these two communities.
Third on the list of most affected regions in Valencia, where 11.6% of the total number of properties which are now worth less than the mortgage are located, a total of 67,181 homes, slightly ahead of Andalucía with 66,418, but considerably ahead of the next in place, Castilla y León, with 26,668.
As this problem has been caused by greedy bankers they should take their share of the loss and not expect home owners to be totally responsible for the debt when they are forced to sell up.
You should buy your principal house to live in. Not as a speculative gamble. From that moment its alleged sale price is entirely irrelevant. If you are buying purely to “invest /gamble” then you take the risk.
That’s fine if you got a job still. Also caused by the recession caused by greedy bankers.
D.S. You are right but at one remove. There are pigs further up the food chain. Namely, politicians of every stripe. They are the only ones with power to curb bankers, It was not in their interests to do so, having their own snouts in the trough. Still do of course.
stefanjo,
your comments apply to the bankers of the whole western world – they operated the Ponzi scheme like one huge criminal family.
DS – the bankers could’nt have caused this problem in Spain by themselves, they needed gullible suckers and a central bank that denied the Spanish banks a chance to enter the US sub-prime market – so they created their own sub-prime.
I repeatedly warned all my Spanish friends what was going to happen, they refused to listen and thought my advice was funny – they are’nt laughing now.
Conmen cannot operate without stupid greedy fools to feed them – caveat emptor – always.
What sort of person would write such vile comments like above.
person,
be specific as to whose comments you find vile and try and answer with something resembling a rational and factual critique.