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Mortgage lending drops, amid rising housing prices in major cities of Romania
Housing in major cities of Romania continued to rise this year, and mortgage lending fell and no longer provided support for transactions, according to financial consultants with Kiwi Finance.
Kiwi Finance ended 2022 with a record level of intermediated loans, worth EUR 400 million, up 15 pct, almost five times faster than lending to the population in the banking system as a whole, in conditions of business of about RON 45 million. Of the total loans intermediated by Kiwi Finance, 91 pct are mortgage loans and 9 pct consumer loans.
According to the analysis, regarding the first semester of 2023, the volume of loans intermediated by Kiwi Finance was RON 800 million, down 15 pct compared to the previous period and by 19 pct compared to the same period a year ago.
The statistics of the National Bank of Romania (BNR) show that the level of new loans granted to households by the banking system advanced slightly in the first five months of 2023, by 1.7 pct, from an equivalent of RON 20 billion to RON 21 billion.
At the end of the first half of 2023, the Kiwi Finance Real Estate Index for apartments and houses reached EUR 1,483/sqm, up 5.5 pct compared to the value at the end of the third quarter of 2022 (EUR 1,406/sqm), being the only real estate index in the entire market based strictly on the value of transactions, not on announcements. In parallel, the average net salary at national level advanced by 15.5 pct to 4,543 RON (915 euros) in May 2023, from 3,933 RON (800 euros) in July 2022.
Kiwi Finance, a credit intermediation company founded in 2003, brought for the first time in Romania assistance and intermediation services in obtaining bank loans, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at no additional cost. In 20 years of activity, the company has intermediated loans of over 2.6 billion euros, being present in 65 cities of Romania.
Since 2020, Kiwi Finance has been part of OLX Group and it is also a founding member of the Romanian Association of Credit Brokers (ARBC).