Fixed rates down 0.10% at the end of March

The fixed rates excluding taxes for housing loans fell by 0.10% at the end of March 2022, for most tranches of loan amounts, according to “Afdal.ma”, a comparator simulator for real estate loans in Morocco.

According to the 1,694 pre-agreements in principle distributed on Afdal.ma since the start of 2022, the fixed rates excluding taxes for housing loans are maintaining their downward trend and recording a drop of 0.10% for most slices of loan amounts, more particularly for loans of less than 250,000 dirhams and between 500,000 to 1,200,000 dirhams, according to the monthly barometer of fixed rates for real estate loans at the end of March 2022 published by Afdal.ma.

However, the rates of monthly disability death insurance have hardly changed, except for a 0.05% increase recorded at the level of credits above 300,000 dirhams, said the same source. The overall effective rate is also becoming more competitive than it already was at the end of 2021, posting a drop of 0.11%, it stands at 4.59% against 4.77% in December.

The CEO of Afdal.ma, Bachir Benslimane Bellemlih, pointed out that for a loan of less than 250,000 dirhams, borrowers can obtain a fixed 4% excluding tax over a period of 20 years, which was impossible before the pandemic.

“We particularly note a fairly substantial drop in the annual percentage rate of charge (APR) from February to March for loan amounts between 1.2 million dirhams (MDH) and 3 MDH, which reached -0.27% at the end of March”, he added, quoted in the press release. This decrease is explained by the desire of establishments to diversify their portfolio with a slightly more upscale clientele, and this by strategically improving their commercial offers a few weeks before the month of April, which represents a period of the year when many of households are beginning to consider buying real estate.

“For amounts less than 800,000 dirhams, there is stagnation or even a slight drop of 0.06% in APRs for the segment indicated, between Q1 2022 and Q4 2021”, says Benslimane Bellemlih. A decrease which testifies to the continued desire of financial institutions to increase their competitiveness in order to better capture and retain customers borrowing at less than 800,000, who represent a large part of the market, and this obviously involves a decrease or at least a rate stabilization.

“We finance both mortgage files of 250,000 dirhams and those of 8,000,000 dirhams”he specified, noting that moreover, the average of the amounts of financing which were the subject of a pre-agreement in principle through AFDAL.ma on Q1 2022 is around 600,000 dirhams. “As for the average amount of financing for files released by our brokerage team over this same period, it is 700,000 dirhams”, says the CEO of Afdal.ma, previously known as Meilleurcredit.ma.

This segment represents the Internet user profile able to simulate and compare the best mortgage offers on the Internet, namely a young worker whose average age is 32 and who receives an average income of 10,000 dirhams, i.e. twice higher than that of customers who go directly through their bank and who are financed up to 300,000 dirhams on average per file.