Mortgage

Cyprus' Parliament has given the green light to a groundbreaking law aimed at empowering homeowners and offering relief in the face of mortgage challenges.

The legislation enables the suspension of home sales through the innovative Mortgage-to-Rent Scheme and objections to participation in the program.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank in 2023 to a nearly 30-year low, as sharply higher mortgage rates, rising prices and a persistently low level of homes on the market combined to push homeownership out of reach for many Americans.

The Hellenic Land Registry has decided to close 139 offices across the country, with their services transferred to the nearest branch or office of the registry. Less than 26 mortgage offices remain to be closed. The challenge is to ensure their smooth integration, as some 150,000 pending cases have also been "transferred."       

Turkish lenders are likely to ease lending standards on loans to enterprises in the first quarter of 2024, a Central Bank survey has shown.

In the last quarter of 2023, the tightening trend ended in the standards that lenders apply to the loans they provide to businesses, the bank said.

Banks have already decided to extend the freezing of interest rates on housing loans, which was decided last May and expires in the same month of 2024.

Mortgage interest rates in Cyprus climbed to 4.91% in October 2023, according to data released by the Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) in its November 2023 edition of Monetary and Financial Statistics. Concurrently, household fixed-term deposits with a one-year maturity dropped to 1.58% compared to the previous month.

The next adjustment of property rates used for tax purposes, known as "objective values," will take place in 2025 with a new automated assessment system.

Although the existing values are already considered outdated, they will be maintained for at least another year.

Rising interest rates seriously hurt mortgage credit, affecting both the demand and supply for mortgages. This stems from the figures of the Bank of Greece, based on which mortgage disbursements fell in the second quarter of 2023 by 10.7%, while in the same period the number of loans granted showed a greater decline of 12.4%.

Black and Hispanic households in New York state, home to America's financial capital, own their homes at half the rate of white households, a government report said Tuesday.

As the year comes to a close, it seems likely that the freeze on foreclosures on primary homes in Cyprus valued at up to 350,000 euros will be extended.