Average mortgage repayment €273
The average monthly mortgage repayment in Portugal will be €273 by July 2023 according to a forecast from the Bank of Portugal.
The Euribor forecast represents 75% of the average monthly payment in 2009 at the height of the financial crisis. The estimates were conveyed on Tuesday by the Governor of the Bank of Portugal, Mário Centeno after a conference in Lisbon when he said that the average mortgage monthly repayment in July this year was €250.
In a presentation that accompanied his speech, Mário Centeno said that: “using the Euribor forecast for July 2023 as a yardstick, the average corrected mortgage repayment would be €273 (only 75% of 2009)”.
In other words, despite the increase in mortgages, in real terms, the repayment would still be 25% shy of the amount it reached in the financial crisis.
The governor emphasised that just 10% of mortgages will be impacted by the higher interest rates based on today’s Euribor estimates for July 2023 adding €4 onto the average mortgage.
In March 2009, the average mortgage repayment was €363, which in real terms, corrected for the increase in family disposable income, equates to a current mortgage repayment of €217”, he said.
“In terms of corrections to take into account the evolution of disposable income, the repayment is 60% of that in 2009”, he said.
Mário Centeno also said that salaries in Portugal over the past year had grown 10% and had not fallen in real terms, and that the real disposable income of families had grown, almost without interruption, since 2015.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if the salaries of those who have kept their jobs, or those who have found new jobs over the past year, have grown 7%, 8% or even 11%. None of these percentages suggest a real fall in salaries” he told the news agency Lusa.