February starts with a new round of rate cuts for mortgage loans, both in RON and in foreign currency, as more and more banks are definitely sticking to rates of less than 10%.
The declines come despite the NBR''s measure to up the costs of the sources of funding attracted by banks in foreign currency by five percent, the increase in interest on the international markets and the difficulties identified by banks in terms of the possibilities of attracting funding sources in RON for the medium and long-term. Credit in euros remains cheap in most cases, both in terms of the interest rates and due to the appreciation of the RON.
An exception in this regard is ING Bank, which is cutting its mortgage credit interest by 0.25% for RON and by 0.75% for those in euros, thus offering interest rates for both currencies at less than 9% a year.
"This way we are making a new attempt to motivate our clients to choose the local currency for funding, without taking on the foreign exchange risk, even though we know how hard they are to convince since they would only look at the short-term costs," Dirk Serbruyns, ING Romania chairman, told ZIARUL FINANCIAR.
BRD in its turn is taking 2.1% off its euro loans and 0.6% off its RON credits today, with funding in domestic currency being, however, one percent more expensive.
The interest on real estate or mortgage loans granted in euros stands at 7.9%, and the interest for loans in RON is down to 8.9% a year. Interest rates vary in line with the interbank rates, that is three-month BUBOR plus 1.4% for RON credits and three-month EURIBOR plus 5.4% for loans in euros. The bank is now taking into account daily fees when calculating incomes, for those professions that are paid this way, such as navigators, pilots and truck drivers.
Raiffeisen Bank recently cut its interest on mortgage credits in RON by two percent, from 13.5% to 11.5% a year, and extended the maximum maturity from 20 to 25 years.
At the same time, Volksbank cut its interest rates for RON by half a percentage point and by a quarter of a percentage point for euros, for real estate funding, for personal loans with a mortgage pledged as security and for car loans.
Interest rates now stand at 7.75% for RON, and 6.75% for euros. For credit in euros, however, the bank charges a "mandatory minimum reserves" fee of 1.55%, in a bid to reduce the additional costs entailed by the increase in the minimal mandatory reserves set by the NBR. The National Bank at the end of last year increased the minimal mandatory reserves by five percentage points to 35%, but major banks prove themselves capable of effortlessly absorbing this cost.
Bancpost has been granting mortgage loans in RON with 7.9% interest (fixed for the first year) or with 9.5% a year (fixed in the first five years) since last autumn.
The mortgage lending market will see high volatility over the next few years, with many bank clients preferring to repay their loans ahead of the due date that they arranged earlier at a higher cost, or changing them from one currency to another, believes Dirk Serbruyns. razvan.voican@zf.ro
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