Mortgage Rates Hit New Highs In September

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.