J.L.M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | Spanish banks have made a big effort over the last few years to provide solutions for more than a million households experiencing difficulties in meeting their mortgages’ repayments, in line with our data.
During this period, measures have been taken in collaboration with the Adminstration to ease the problems for many households. These include the Code of Good Practices in 2012 and the creation of the Social Housing Fund in 2013.
When households have had a problem in making the payments, they have been given facilities which allow them to hold on to their homes and match the calendar of mortgage repayments to their financial capacity. We estimate that over 10% of current existing mortgages have been refinanced or restructured.
Yesterday, the Economy Ministry published the updated figures on the Code of Good Practices, referring to the second half of last year…
The Code of Good Practices has allowed for a total of 45,697 households to benefit from restructuring their mortgage debt. In the over five years of the Code’s existence, there have been 38,595 restructurings of outstanding debt, 7,095 cases of payment made in kind and 7 acquittances. In the whole of 2016, 14,730 transactions have been carried out via the Code of Good Practice, an increase of 2% from a year earlier, according to the information given to Congress by the Code of Good Practice Control Committee. Of this figure, 13,669 transactions correspond to debt restructurings and 1,060 payments in kind.
Taking the Social Housing Fund into account as well, over 78,798 families have benefited from these measures focused on groups of the population at risk of exclusion: out of the 45,697 of the Code of Good Practices, the Social Housing Fund has allowed for 9,062 homes to be assigned (end-2016) and 24,039 releases have been suspended via the mortgage moratorium (February 2017).
The information provided to Congress shows a reduction in requests for debt restructuring via the Code of Good Practices, in line with the boost to the Spanish economy. In the second half of 2016, there was a total of 9,239 requests compared to 17,306 in the first half. Of these requests, 5,223 transactions have been completed, of which 4,806 were debt restructurings and in 417 cases, payments made in kind.
