Spanish mortgage approvals increased 6.4% in August

Mortgage approvals have grown significantly throughout 2016, and August was no exception.

As sales volumes and prices rise, confidence in Spain’s property industry has been growing in lock-step, with banks increasingly keen to lend and keep the market recovery going.

Data published last week by the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed that the number of mortgages approved in August reached 20,309 nationwide – a 6.4 per cent increase on the same month last year.

This growth marked the 25^th out of the past 26 months that mortgage approvals have risen, with only July 2015 bucking this evident trend. So far in 2016, every month has seen impressive amounts of mortgages offered, as more and more Spaniards join the Brits, Germans and Scandinavians in snapping up Spanish property.

A closer look at August’s data also reveals that the average loan capital reached €110,000, which is a 4.8 per cent increase on the preceding year and a healthy 11.5 per cent rise since August 2015.

Taken for the year as a whole, the first eight months of the year have seen 186,000 new residential property mortgages approved in Spain, which is 13 per cent higher than the same period in 2015, while the rolling 12-month comparison sees a 14 per cent increase.

Over the course of the past 12 months, Spanish banks have approved 268,000 new mortgages.