When she contacted her adviser at the Caisse d’Epargne Ile-de-France in the heart of August to open a joint account, Cécile was immediately alerted. “She said to me, ‘I hope you don’t want to take out a mortgage, we’re not offering any more until October, because of the wear and tear.’ » Contacted, the company states that it has indeed been brought “to dismiss cases on a case-by-case basis due to the rate of attrition”but it“no general instructions were given”. And this reluctance is shared by most banking brands.
So much so that the notaries of France mentioned in their last note on the economy published in July “usury rates that hinder access to credit and pose a risk of blocking the property market”.
Save the margins
The purpose of the latter is to protect the borrower against excessively high credit interest rates. They correspond to the maximum legal rate that banks are allowed to offer their customers: the cost of the loan, including the borrower’s insurance and administration fees, must remain below this ceiling. It is set by the Banque de France every quarter, based on the average rates used by the banks and increased by one third.
“The banks are overwhelmed by files and they only choose the best profiles” Sandrine Allonier, director of studies at the broker Vousfinancer
Loan interest rates have been historically low in recent years, and the attrition rate is therefore also low (2.57% for loans over twenty years and 2.60% for those with ten to twenty years since 1.eh July), although mortgage rates rise, in the wake of OAT (Treasury Bills) rates, to ten years. For notaries who “see an increase in the number of loan rejections”this very slow increase in wear rates “de facto excludes certain households”.
In this context, the banks have for several months been reluctant to work with brokers to save their margins. “They believe that it is not profitable to lend under the current conditions and are waiting for the next increase in the usurious rate, on 1eh October, explains Sandrine Allonier, director of studies for the mortgage broker Vousfinancer. Only a quarter of the banks we work with still agree to lend, so they are overwhelmed with files and select only the best profiles. » At this broker, the rejection rate increased to 30%-40% of submitted files compared to 10% last year.