In budgets where income is relatively low or with a high rate of effort, the increase in the cost of living is already causing, “more than slippages, real ruptures in family budgets”, says the coordinator of the Financial Protection Office of the Deco, Natália Nunes, in statements to Lusa.
Since September, more families are asking for help in the face of the first increases resulting from the periodic review of the provision of credit contracted with a variable rate indexed to Euribor.
“The first revisions in which the impact is significant are now starting to come,” said Natália Nunes, adding that the current perspective of Euribor continuing to increase and inflation at high values is “a major concern”: “Therefore, the difficulties of families, unfortunately, will stay longer”, he concluded.
The reason for requests for help from the association changed in the last two years, explains the official, specifying that, in 2021, contacts to the association were more from families who did not have sufficient income, because the pandemic had caused a significant reduction in income or even a total absence.
“In 2022, what we see is that families have income, but they are clearly insufficient to meet day-to-day expenses, largely because of the increase in the cost of living”, said Natália Nunes, referring to the rise in the bill of the food, since the beginning of the year, and housing (since September), the two main expenses in household budgets.
This year, until September, Deco’s system to support the over-indebted registered 20,036 requests for help and information, while in the whole of 2021 it received 30,000 requests and in 2019 just over 29,000 requests, according to data from the association.
On average, the income of families seeking this support was 1,100 euros, with an amount of installments with credit of 7,500 euros, which translates to a family effort rate of 68%, “very high” warns Deco, when not should be more than 35% of income.
The most recent data from Banco de Portugal, for 2021, contained in the Retail Banking Markets Monitoring Report, indicate that the number of renegotiations in mortgage loan contracts has increased significantly, with 35,203 renegotiations having been carried out (36 more, 3% than in the previous year), involving 33,639 credit agreements (35.9% more).
These renegotiations in 2021 corresponded to an amount of renegotiated credit of 3.1 billion euros, an increase of 24% compared to 2020, considering the Bank of Portugal that these increases in the number of renegotiations and in the amount of renegotiated credit may be related to the low number of renegotiations in 2020, due to the validity of the public moratorium regime, and to the early termination of this regime, which took place in September 2021 for most housing credit contracts.
In most contracts subject to renegotiation (88.8%), borrowers did not show any situation of default, as in previous years, but the number of renegotiated housing credit contracts in which the borrower was in default increased by 26 .6%, but less significantly than the number of renegotiated contracts in which there was no default (37.2%), which the institution says may be associated with the maintenance of moratoriums on housing credit in 2021.
The Minister of Finance announced, on Monday, that the Government will present in “a few weeks” the diploma that will establish conditions and modalities for the renegotiation of housing credit contracts, one of the measures planned for next year with the aim of defining forms, modalities and conditions to develop and request negotiation processes.
This measure announced by the executive for the renegotiation of mortgage loan contracts requires banks to renegotiate the contracts, periodically evaluating the evolution of the effort rate in variable rate contracts and, in the event of a significant deterioration and conditions being met, submitting proposals to customers. .
According to the Government’s presentation, this measure allows for refinancing, term extensions or changes in the type of rate and consolidation and can benefit 1.3 million households.
VP (AAT/MPE) // EA
