Real estate credit for savings has a 16.4% drop in December, says association – 02/02/2023 – Market

Credit for real estate financing with resources from savings accounts fell 16.4% in December last year compared to the same period of the previous year, according to data released this Thursday (2nd), by Abecip (Brazilian Association of Real Estate Credit and Savings Entities). ).

Despite the decline, it was the third largest credit volume for a month of December and was 0.2% above November 2022.

In 2022, the volume financed with resources from the SBPE (Brazilian Savings and Loan System) totaled R$ 179.2 billion. About 13% lower than in all of 2021, when the real estate market recorded its highest historical sales result.

FGTS (Employee Severance Indemnity Fund) financing reached BRL 61.6 billion, up 27% between 2021 and 2022.

Access to credit is currently the biggest barrier to buying property in Brazil, according to a study by Brain Inteligencia Estratégica.

Maintained this Wednesday (1st) by the Copom (Monetary Policy Committee), the basic interest rate of 13.75% jumped from 2% in about a year. The surge drove many away from financing and reduced savings deposits, where much of the money that banks use to finance mortgages comes from.

For José Ramos Rocha Neto, president of Abecip, however, maintaining the Selic at 13.75% will not shake the real estate market. The entity’s optimistic projection is that 2023 will be the third largest year in the historical series, with financing projections (with resources from SBPE savings plus FGTS) of around R$ 221 billion. If confirmed, it would be an 8% reduction over 2022.

Neto believes that mortgage interest rates will remain at current levels, as financial institutions have calculated a lower cost than the funds raised.

“The balance sheets from September of last year already show that the agents that work in the SBPE are overinvested. That is, the banks are already investing more in real estate credit than the mandatory percentage of 65% of use of the savings balance”, said the president of Abecip during a press conference.

When Selic reached 2% per year, banks charged an annual interest rate of 7% on housing loans. Today, the charge is between 8% and 10%.

Regarding default, the level remained the same as in 2021: 1.5%. The index considers contracts with more than three overdue installments.

The percentage of cancellations in the city of São Paulo continues to fall in relation to the volume of sales, according to Abecip with data from Secovi-SP.

Sanctioned at the end of 2018, after companies saw sales cancellations explode with the 2014 recession, the legislation on the cancellation of the property purchase and sale agreement gives customers who give up buying a property negotiated on the floor the right to receive 50% of the amount already given to the construction company, without refunding the brokerage fee.

Since 2018, the percentage of cancellations has dropped from 8.6% to the current 5.1%.

For lawyer Pedro Serpa, from S2GDC Advogados, the retreat is a sign that the legislation is inhibiting speculators who bought property to get back a high percentage of the price paid with monetary correction and interest.