Sursa foto: FNGCIMM
A Romanian needs to work almost 9 years to be able to afford to buy a two-room apartment, without taking a loan from the bank, and the period increases to 11 years for a three-room apartment, according to data published on Thursday by the National Bank of Romania (NBR) in the Financial Stability Report.
“Without resorting to financial support through a bank loan, the time required to purchase a 2-room home nationwide is about 8.5 years (the price-to-income ratio), and in the case of a 3-room building the duration increases to over 11 years (data as of December 2020) ”, shows BNR.
The index on access to the mortgage market shows that the average income of a typical household, according to data in December 2020, was approximately equal to the income needed to purchase a home. The accessibility index, as it is also called, measures the median income of a household in relation to the income needed to purchase a home with an advance of 25 percent, a relative degree of indebtedness to income of 45 percent and a maturity of 25 years.
Recomandări Video
Articolul continuă mai jos
The National Bank states that the significant role of “First Home” loans continues to be maintained, but is on a downward trend, accounting for 18 percent of the new mortgage lending to the population in the last 12 months and 39 percent of the total stock of mortgage loans (as of March 2020), decreasing by 3 percentage points compared to March 2019.
The government program “First House”, modified by the program “A house, a family”, became from August 15, 2020 “New House”. The New House program removes income restrictions and interest rate subsidy provisions, the novelty being the differentiation of the proportion representing the advance and guarantee from the state according to the value of the loan, as follows: (i) for loans for the purchase of new homes of up to 140,000 euros, the advance charged is 15 percent, and the guarantee in the name and account of the state is 60 percent; (ii) for loans for new housing up to EUR 70,000, the advance is 5 per cent and the guarantee is 50 per cent; (iii) for loans for the purchase of old housing, the conditions of loans for new housing up to EUR 70,000 shall apply.
The NBR states that the COVID-19 pandemic had a visible impact on the real estate market, but, unlike previous episodes of crisis, no large-scale negative effects are expected in the real estate sector. The uncertainties that characterize future economic developments, both in Romania and in Europe and globally, can put significant pressure on the balance of the real estate market.
The price of residential properties increased in the last quarter of 2020 by 2 percent in nominal terms compared to the last quarter of 2019, registering a sequential decrease in prices in the third quarter of 2020 compared to the previous quarter of -2.6 percent. For the next 3 months, expectations related to rising prices have significantly improved, indicating a robust evolution of the real estate market in the second half of 2021, according to the NBR. The evolution of real estate prices in Romania was in line with the dynamics registered in Hungary and Bulgaria, where real estate prices registered a slight decrease in Q2 / Q3 2020, while real estate markets at European level, as well as for other countries such as the Czech Republic or Poland, have been more resilient, having no quarterly decline in real estate prices.