Banks granted €10.63B for home purchases in 2019, maximum since 2008

New credit granted by banks in 2019 for house purchase grew 8.1% year-on-year to €10.63 billion, “an amount that corresponds to a maximum of the decade,” revealed the AICCOPN association.

In a statement, the Association of Construction and Public Works Industries (AICCOPN) stressed that it is necessary to “go back to 2008 to find a year with a greater volume of credit granted.”

At the same time, taking into account “the stock of credit for housing, at the end of 2019, there is a slight increase of 0.3%, in year-on-year terms,” totalling €93,290 million, according to the association’s data.

However, the volume of credit granted to construction and real estate companies last year registered “a year-on-year reduction of 6.6%, standing at only €16.0 billion, i.e. the lowest value since the beginning of the 21st century,” according to the association.

As regards cement consumption, last year “3.23 million tons of cement were used in the national market, which corresponds to a growth of 14.9% compared to 2018 and a maximum of the last six years, approaching the levels registered in 2012.”

Construction and rehabilitation of residential buildings licensed by municipal councils last year “registered an increase of 9.4%, compared to the previous year, to 16,461, with the number of homes licensed in new buildings totaling 23,737, a year-on-year growth of 17.2%.”

In December, “the average value of housing for bank valuation purposes was €1,321 per square metre, an increase of 8.3% compared with €1,220 in the last month of 2018.”

The association also highlighted the metropolitan area of Porto, where “the number of dwellings licensed in new constructions in 2019 totalled 4,270, an increase of 29.1% on the 3,308 dwellings licensed in 2018.”

Regarding the bank valuation of housing in this region, in December there was a “year-on-year increase of 10.4% to €1,330 per square meter.”