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Home sales are surging, driven by the low mortgage interest rates. Where ABN AMRO’s analysts had previously predicted a five percent drop, they now expect home sales to stabilise as low mortgage costs make buying more affordable. At the same time, house prices continue to rise as available homes remain in short supply.
ABN AMRO landed the Gouden Lotus Award Hypotheekmarkt (‘Golden Lotus Award for the Mortgage Market’) for best mortgage provider in the Netherlands in 2019. And not only that: at the HypoVak awards ceremony in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands, on Tuesday 28 May, the bank also landed the Golden Lotus Award for Most Innovative Mortgage Product, for its recently launched Home Equity Mortgage. These awards are an initiative of the InFinance trade journal and the Hypotheek Business Club (‘Mortgage Business Club’). The winners were picked by financial advisers across the Netherlands, who rated the nominees on performance, products and services.
Eight out of ten Dutch home-owners expect to gain if they were to sell their homes today, with only one in ten believing they wouldn’t. The remainder were don’t knows. Owners of medium-priced homes are the most sanguine about the amount they think is involved. Well over 20% of owners of homes with purchase prices between EUR 200,000 and EUR 400,000 assume they stand to make between EUR 50,000 and EUR 100,000, with another 20% predicting gains in excess of EUR 100,000. These and other findings may be gleaned from a survey of 1,250 home-owners commissioned by ABN AMRO and carried out by market research agency Ipsos.
The Dutch housing market has moved past peak overheating, with ABN AMRO Group Economics’ latest Housing Market Monitor showing ever-increasing signals of cooling down. The bank’s economists point to less rapidly rising house prices and the persistent fall in the number of homes actually purchased – a confluence of trends corroborating their forecasts that house purchases will end this year 5% down. At the same time, Group Economics assumes that house prices will advance less rapidly than they have done recently. That said, the projected rise by 6% still outpaces the historic average by one percentage point.
The housing shortage is continuing to drive up prices. Last August the average price of existing housing was 9.3% higher than in the same period last year, prompting ABN AMRO’s Group Economics to raise its house price estimates for 2018.
Many people find themselves in a difficult position once they turn 56. They might not earn enough to buy a new home, for example, or they could have a large amount of equity tied up in their property. Starting this week, ABN AMRO will make it easier for them to take out a mortgage for a new home or to cash out their home equity. They can use that equity in a variety of ways: to supplement their income, for example, or to gift it to their children or grandchildren or refurbish their current home. The relaxed policy rules also extend to mortgage loans provided by ABN AMRO’s subsidiary Florius.
House prices look set to surpass earlier projections by climbing even higher, on the back of interest rates probably staying at lower levels. In its latest report on the Dutch residential property market, the Housing Market Monitor (in Dutch only), ABN AMRO’s Group Economics predicts an average 2018 increase in house prices of 8.5% relative to 2017. Until quite recently, ABN AMRO’s economists had forecast an 8% advance, and they have now also sharply bumped up their projections for 2019: a 7% uptick in house prices, significantly higher than the 5% it predicted previously.
Prices in the Dutch housing market will be rising faster than expected in 2018. In its new publication the Housing Market Monitor, ABN AMRO’s Group Economics team reports that average prices of houses will likely end up 8% higher than in 2017. This means the bank’s economists have significantly adjusted their expectations upward, as only recently they were expecting to see a rise of 6%. The main reason for the adjustment is the strong rise in prices of homes sold in the first months of this year. In February, prices were up 9.5% on the same month last year. As a result of the ongoing increase, current house prices barely fall short of the pre-crisis level.
Nearly a third of Dutch mortgage holders feel they are paying a high or very high rate of interest on their mortgage. 83% of this group borrow at a rate of 4% or more. These are a few of the results from a survey that market researchers Gfk performed for ABN AMRO among 1,200 mortgage holders. Nearly four in ten respondents described the mortgage interest rate they pay as low or very low. Three quarters (74%) of this group borrow at a rate of less than 3%.
ABN AMRO has lodged a Supreme Court appeal against the ruling of the Amsterdam court on 19 December 2017. In the so-called Euribor cases, clients have been seeking a ruling whether ABN AMRO was legally entitled to increase the mark-up on their Euribor-based mortgages.
Once more the housing market is showing signs of increasing tension. ABN AMRO's Group Economics department notes the narrowing average gap between the prices asked and offered for homes.
The new government has chosen a “good” moment to speed up the planned cuts in mortgage interest tax relief . “With the market starting to show signs of overheating, an accelerated scale-back of mortgage-related tax facilities could curb the upward trend in home prices,” ABN AMRO Group Economics predicts. Furthermore, Group Economics expects there will be only a minor negative effect on housing costs, as mortgage interest rates are at historic lows. This might, however, change if mortgage rates trend upwards again – the Group hasn't ruled out that possibility long-term.
Home buyers will continue to benefit from low mortgage rates for longer than was recently thought. ABN AMRO’s Group Economics unit predicts that a 10-year yield of 1.0% at year-end 2018, as opposed to 1.5% as expected previously. This means that long-term mortgage rates, which follow the 10-year yield, will also start increasing later than the economists expected at the start of this year.
The number of houses sold this year is likely to be significantly higher than first projected. According to its latest Housing Market Monitor, ABN AMRO Group Economics now expects transaction numbers to increase by 15% relative to 2016, quite a jump compared with its earlier forecast of 5%. House prices are also likely to rise at a faster pace than initially anticipated. Group Economics sees prices rising by 7% in 2017 rather than 5% as they suggested earlier, bringing the house price average closer and closer to its 2008 record high.
ABN AMRO is today announcing the results of the investigation into why employees copied signatures in revised mortgage advice reports. Frans van der Horst, CEO of ABN AMRO Retail Banking, and Wies Wagenaar, Head of Conduct, who is in charge of the inquiry, discuss the results of the investigation.
