According to data from the Banque de France, the total amount of new housing loans granted to individuals stood at 12 billion euros last July, compared to 21.8 billion euros in July 2022. This represents a fall of 45% over one year and is the lowest level since December 2014. In France, the total outstanding amount of household mortgages amounted to 1,294 billion euros in July, compared to 1,258 billion a year earlier, representing a growth rate of 2.7%, again the weakest in eight years.
Despite this slowdown, the Banque de France notes that this rate remains “more than three times higher than the average in the euro zone”, which stands at 0.8%. It is also in comparison with 2.4% in Germany, 1.1% in Italy, but is down 3.3% in Spain.
As a result of the tightening of its monetary policy decided by the European Central Bank (ECB) to fight against inflation, the rate of mortgage loans is also rising sharply. According to a first estimate by the Banque de France, that of new loans, excluding fees and insurance, averaged 3.32% in August, after 3.17% in July and 3.05% in June. It was still 2.2% in January and 1.45% a year ago. Since the beginning of the turn of the century, the average mortgage rate peaked at 6.1% in June 2001 and bottomed out at 1.1% in December 2021.
