More than 73,000 home loans have already been renegotiated by private banks.

Main private banks have renegotiated more than 73,000 mortgages until September because of families' difficulties in paying monthly installments. Santander Totta's official source said that more than 36 thousand mortgages have been reviewed since the beginning of the year. Novo Banco has made 17,700 revisions and BCP has made more than 16,000 revisions. BPI did not disclose the total number of revised loans, noting only that the revised loans total 950 million euros. Under Regulation 80-A/2022, 414 million euros worth of loans affecting 3,400 customers were revised. Thousands of loan revisions are done in accordance with government legislation, but most are done by commercial agreement between the customer and the bank''(commercial revision).

Refinancing a loan can be done in a variety of ways, including reducing the "spread" (the bank's trading margin), increasing the loan's repayment period or deferring the payment (for example, the customer pays only interest for a year, which reduces the monthly installment but increases the missing amount in the future). Rising interest rates create problems for many families who are paying off their mortgages, as this is reflected in variable interest rates by a significant increase in monthly installments. Keep up to date with all property information and the latest data reports in our''daily and weekly bulletins.

Interest rate support: thousands of backed contracts

To mitigate the immediate impact, banks are renegotiating loans and the government is taking action, such as an allowance for families with mortgage difficulties (with certain conditions). According to official figures Santander Totta has more than 10,000 loans with support, BPI has 4,700 customers with an average monthly allowance of 10 euros, BCP had 2,400 loan contracts with allowances, with an average allowance of 32 euros monthly, and Novo Banco had 1,360 mortgage loan contracts with government interest allowances in the first nine months of the year.

Since last Thursday, customers with mortgage loans can''Apply for a program that sets the payment for two years and reduces it from the current value. The amount not paid by customers in two years will be paid in the future, increasing the amount of capital (meaning customers will pay more interest).

Till September, the four main private banks operating in Portugal posted a combined profit of €2,301 million, almost double that of the first nine months of 2022. The main factor behind the strong earnings growth is the financial margin, which is the difference between what banks demand for loans and what they pay for deposits.