Podemos is going to register this Tuesday a bill so that bank customers can change their mortgages from variable rates to fixed rates for free, with the same or better conditions than those that these entities are offering to new users in the time of change.
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Party sources state that what they seek with this measure is to protect households from future increases in interest rates, which, as they recall, have gone from 0% in June 2022 to 3.5% in March 2023, which which translates into increases of up to 350 euros per month in installments. The party recalls the “serious economic problems” that these increases are causing for families, especially in a country like Spain where most mortgages “depend on the evolution of the Euribor.”
The text that the party will register this Tuesday proposes forcing financial institutions to offer free of charge the change from a variable mortgage to a fixed one from the same entity and “the free transition from a variable mortgage to a fixed one from another entity” , which would assume the costs of the operation“. “If the bank where the client had the variable mortgage presented a counteroffer to avoid the change to another entity, it would have to assume all the costs of the operation,” the same sources explain. For the party, “it is a doubly effective measure” because it “reduces the economic uncertainty of families” and “gives stability to the financial system” by reducing the risk of defaults.
The current code of good practices, signed by practically the entire banking sector, set out a series of protection measures for vulnerable mortgagees and also included proposals for other clients with this type of loan. Specifically, a suspension was applied throughout this year of the commissions and charges for transferring a mortgage from a variable rate to a fixed rate, as proposed by We can establish by law. In addition, when this period ends, the Government reduced the limit of commissions that can be applied for carrying out this operation. It went from 0.15% to 0.05%. The entry into force of the code, on January 1, has coincided with an increase in this type of renegotiation with the bank to try to reduce the cost of the mortgage.
The formation led by Ione Belarra therefore asks her government partner to “act urgently” with measures of this type to face the rise in interest rates. Already in September, when the increase in mortgages began to be noticed, the Minister of Social Rights and the 2030 Agenda proposed forcing banks to offer clients the possibility of taking advantage of a reduction for one year of the variable rate to 0, 1%. Podemos then understood that such a measure could reduce the monthly mortgage payment of between 100 and 150 euros for families with economic problems. And it also left a margin for the banks in order to avoid situations of delinquency or non-payment to the entities themselves.
Podemos proposes to all political forces that we make it free to change from a variable mortgage to another at a fixed rate. Thus we could avoid increases of hundreds of euros per month that will end in default.
We must act now.
—Ione Belarra (@ionebelarra) April 11, 2023
Unidas Podemos then asked its government partner to include this mechanism in the shield of measures to alleviate the effects of the crisis, but the Treasury rejected it, understanding that it did not conform to the “legal framework” and that it could “have complications for users fixed rate”. The confederal space raised a similar measure of the same type again this December, in the negotiation of the third anti-crisis decree, although again without success.
In February, along the same lines, the second vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, called for the freezing of mortgages. “It is not common sense that today a mortgage of 150,000 euros has raised the fee by 258 euros while the entities are having absolutely extraordinary benefits,” said Díaz. For this reason, she calls on the Government to intervene in the market so that mortgage payments are at the levels of July 2022, before the ECB began to raise rates. Until now, however, the PSOE has not accepted any of these measures to contain the effects of the rate hike.
