Intended to protect individuals from abusive borrowing conditions, this rate caps all the costs of a home loan: credit rate charged by the bank, any brokers’ commission, borrower insurance. The rate is calculated each quarter by the Banque de France, which takes into account the average rates charged by banks over the last three months, increased by one third.
“Favourable year”
Thus, for a loan of less than 10 years, the maximum legal rate of a mortgage will increase in January to 3.41% ( once morest 3.03% currently) and that for a loan between 10 and 20 years will increase to 3.53 % ( once morest 3.03%).
This increase is considered ” once more well proportioned, and close” to the previous one, on October 1 by the Banque de France, the institution said in a press release. “The year 2022 was once more a favorable year for mortgage loans”, according to the Banque de France, which noted a growth rate of mortgage loans to households of 5.7% in the first estimate. “The interest rate conditions remained the most attractive and safest of the major countries in the euro zone,” she said.
The ceiling rates found themselves under fire from critics this summer, particularly from brokers who saw them as a barrier to access to mortgages. One of their unions had even gone so far as to demonstrate on September 20 in front of the headquarters of the Banque de France in Paris, to ask the central bank to make a gesture.
Short respite?
When it was last updated on October 1, the Banque de France had considered “neither desirable nor necessary […] an exceptional increase” in ceiling rates, whose role “is to protect borrowers”. Because raising the wear rate has the effect of making new mortgages more expensive for individuals.
The rise in interest rates for new mortgages has been noticeable since the spring, with the banks passing on the tightening of the monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB), via an increase in its key rate, in order to combat inflation.
