New mortgages at €2.4Bn in Q1 of 2020

Portuguese banks lent €952 million for mortgages in March bringing the total for home loans for the first quarter of 2020 to €2.84Bn.

It was the quarter with the highest amount of credit lent by banks for homes since 2008 according to figures released by the Bank of Portugal.
There was a 3.6% on the previous month (€919 million in February) and 9.4% like-for-like on March 2019 which stood at €870 million.
All told, the first quarter of 2020 was the best for the banks in terms of mortgage lending since the Great Recession began in 2008.
In like-for-like terms, mortgages lent for January to March was up 21% compared to the €2.3Bn lent in the first quarter of 2019.
And for new mortgages the average interest fell four base points to 1.02%.
Bank Santander alone saw credit for home loans increase by 1.4% in Q1 to an overall gross of €19.8Bn on the same period in 2019 or €28 million of new mortgages for the quarter.
The bank also announced profits of €118.9 million in the first quarter, down 13.4% on the same period in 2019.
Its financial director, Manuel Preto said that in the first quarter the bank had set aside an extra €30 million in provisions for credit in the expectation of losses that could occur because of the crisis.
The bank’s president Pedro Castro e Almeida also added that the bank had given payment moratoria to 80,000 clients on loans and said he expected the grace period to be extended by a further six months as economic uncertainty continues.
According to the bank boss, credit holidays for clients represent an injection of liquidity to families and companies worth €1Bn since this would have been the amount that private individuals and companies would have had to have paid in capital and interest to September (when the current moratoria comes to and end).