Spain’s Frightened Home Mortgage Holders Are Flooding Banks With Calls For Payment Holidays They Cannot Get

BANKS in Spain are being inundated with people wanting mortgage payment breaks due to the Covid-19 crisis.

A report from the Reuters news agency quotes an unnamed client solutions manager at a major bank as saying that they had received thousands of requests in just a few days for a payment holiday.

The source told Reuters that many of the people that had made contact did not meet the “the most basic conditions” for mortgage relief set by the government.

Under the rules to get a break, the mortgage payments have to be more than 30 per cent of household income and there is an income ceiling as well.

In addition, anybody who is out of work due to the State of Alarm, has to produce a document proving that they were unemployed.

Experts suggest that due to the limitations imposed by the government, many mortgage holders are struggling to get any relief.

The Reuters source said that his bank was trying not to lose customers who were meeting their payment obligations before the crisis, and were offering them options such as six-month extensions to the terms on their mortgages.

Mortgages represent well over a third of loans handed out by banks, which the Bank of Spain estimates at being around €500 billion.

The Spanish Mortgage Association estimated that there were around seven million home mortgages by the end of 2019.

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Alex Trelinski

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