Mortgage financiers are hoping for falling real estate prices

Dusseldorf The hard facts come from the Bundesbank. At the Euroforum annual conference on construction financing, Alexander Schulz, Head of Risk Analysis at the Bundesbank, made it clear to the participants how dramatic the situation is. “Since we’ve been surveying banks in this way since 2003, demand for mortgage lending has never fallen as sharply as it did in the third quarter,” he said.

Reiner Lux, Managing Director of VDP Research, the research institute of the Association of Pfandbrief Banks, backs this up with figures: “We expect 570,000 transactions this year, compared to 700,000 in the years before, so we are seeing a decline of 20 to 30 percent.”