Sun, Nov 08 2009
Four Bulgarian banks raised the interest rates charged on lev-denominated mortgage loans in September, data from moitepari.bg website, which compares loan and personal finance offers of different lenders, showed.
The Moite Pari leva-denominated index, which tracks the average annual interest rates of 20-year mortgages, picked up five basis points to reach 9.61 per cent, the highest since was launched at the end of 2005.
Five of the fifteen leading local-currency mortgage lenders tracked by the index have revised their mortgage loan terms. Only Municipal Bank cut by the price of its most popular mortgage loan by two basis points after the central bank lowered its benchmark rate, the website said.
The price of Allianz Bank Bulgaria's loans jumped by 0.76 percentage points as the interest rate grew nearly as much.
Raiffeisenbank's Bulgarian arm added 30 basis points to the rate of its best mortgage offer, and the new service fee brought the total increase to 0.38 percentage points.
The SOFIBOR index rising 0.15 percentage points in September drove up the price of ProCredit Bank's mortgages by 0.13 percentage points.
UniCredit Bulbank made a milder increase, adding eight basis points and halving application fee, for a total increase of seven basis points.
The Moite Pari euro-denominated index rose almost twice as quicker than its local-currency counterpart due to price hikes by EIBank, Allianz Bank Bulgaria, UniCredit Bulbank, Raiffeisenbank and ProCredit Bank. Up by nine basis points, the average annual interest rates of 20-year mortgages denominated in euro is now 8.46 per cent.
Source: Dnevnik.bg
Office rent transactions peaked at 65 000 sq m between July and September 2008, but collapsed to 10 700 sq m in Q3 2009, Forton manager Sergei Koinov said.
Most potential buyers are now opting to buy a luxury flat in the range of 120 000 to 150 000 euro or a single family home for about 500 000 euro.
About 30 000 to 35 000 people employed in the construction sector were facing redundancies in 2010, Bulgaria's Regional Development Minister Rossen Plevneliev said on October 26.
Average market prices of housing in Bulgaria dropped five per cent in July-September, measured quarter-on-quarter, the National Statistical Institute said on October 23 2009.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has released a 43.5 million euro loan to Sofia Municipality, for infrastructure projects worth 88.1 million euro in total