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“The Demand for mortgage loans has been growing for several months. Just last month, banks lent Poles almost PLN 7.3 billion (EUR 1.6 billion) for property purchases," Dziennik Gazeta Prawna" (DGP) daily reported.
“DGP" refers to the data of the Credit Information Bureau (BIK). It shows that compared to March 2020, when the pandemic began, mortgage sales have increased by 17.1 percent.
"And in relation to March 2019 - long before COVID-19, at a time when the residential real estate market was on an upward trend, the value of mortgages granted is higher by approximately 35 percent,” DGP emphasised.
“What is happening with mortgage loans can definitely be called a bull market. Since November, we have been seeing increased customer interest, measured by the number of submitted applications,” said BIK analyst professor Waldemar Rogowski.
He explained that mortgage borrowers have been in a hurry because they expect a further increase in housing prices.
Expander's analyst Jarosław Sadowski, quoted in DGP, said that “the interest is so great that they (banks) had to temporarily raise their margins to hold back the influx of applications a bit and be able to handle those that had already reached them.”
DGP added that this situation was caused by the loosening of the mortgage policy, which mainly consists of easing of the buyers’ down payment requirements. “Also, the interest rate is at a record low, because the Monetary Policy Council has radically cut interest rates in response to the pandemic crisis,” the daily wrote.
The daily reported that forecasts from the beginning of the pandemic that indicated the crisis would trigger a drop in housing prices were not correct. The demand for housing has, on the contrary, increased but supply is lower.