Hacker Read

tehlike | karma 4415 | avg karma 1.89 · 2020-02-22 01:27:14

Is it 1% interest rate over there?

stevesimmons | karma 2286 | avg karma 3.57 · 2020-02-22 07:53:28+00:00

Yes, in Eurozone countries, 10 year fixed mortgage are typically 0.99%.

It's amazingly cheap. Down from 3.5% ten years ago.

The downside of low rates is house prices correspondingly very high.

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rsynnott | karma 18312 | avg karma 2.1 · 2020-02-22 10:40:35

Except here in Ireland, unfortunately; absolute lowest mortgage available is 2.3%.

Repossession is especially difficult here, which raises the risk for the lender, and the banks unwisely gave out ECB trackers (as opposed to the EURIBOR trackers more common elsewhere) back in the day; some of these can be as low as 0.5%, so everyone else has to pay for that legacy.

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patrickk | karma 4966 | avg karma 2.98 · 2020-02-22 08:31:15+00:00

Yes, in Germany for example. Some cities are experiencing drastically rising housing costs as a result. There was a bank in Denmark (not in the Eurozone) offering negative rate mortgages. In reality the bank tacked on fees so they weren’t paying people to take out a mortgage!