'A home loan with a fixed payment? The amount is subject to change.'

Families can start to fix their mortgage payment for two years, a new government measure that came into effect on November 2.

But in fact, there are some families whose housing payment will change within 24 months of joining this support and will not be completely fixed.

It is guaranteed that the payment amount will be lower, although the discount may not always be 30% of Euribor for 6 months. Explanation.

After the measure provided for in Resolution No. 91/2023 of October 11 came into force, the Banco de Portugal (BdP) published a set of questions and answers about the temporary establishment of the housing payment.

It states that the housing payment will indeed decrease during the first 24 months''after accession. However, the housing payment may not be fixed for a given period for all cases.

"The amount of the payment may not always be the same" in certain cases, the Portuguese regulator explains. This is because there are two ways to calculate the housing payment under this support: one is by applying 70% of the EurIbor for 6 months in force in the previous month (taking into account the spread); in the other case, if applying 70% of EurIbor for 6 months is not enough to pay the initial interest on the contract, the housing payment will be "the amount of interest that should have been paid according to the initial terms of the contract", explains BdP.

With regard to the second case, BdP explains that "within 24''months the figure associated with the initial contract terms may change and the amount of interest payable under the initial contract terms may change and result in a higher payment'. So it will all depend on how the EurIbor selected changes, if it goes up, this change will be reflected in the housing payment calculated under this support. This also means that in these cases, the 30% EurIbor discount is not guaranteed.

What happens after the housing payment set-up ends?

After two years of installing a housing payment, 'the monthly payment will be higher than''if you hadn't joined this measure', warns BdP.

Why will the house payment become higher than the initial payment plan? "Because the amount owed at the end of the 24th month is higher than if you had kept the initial terms of the contract, because a smaller share of the capital has been paid during the first 24 months," says also the regulator led by Mariu Centeno.

So, from the two-year installation period onwards, the new housing payment will be calculated using the interest rate from the original contract and will vary depending on the term of the contract. However, it will always be higher than for borrowers who did not join the measure.

It should be noted that participation in this support will increase the overall''The cost of a home loan, as Deco and the BPI president have already warned. And the BdP confirmed that setting up a house payment would mean a higher interest payment. "From the moment you join, the amount of monthly interest paid will always be higher than if you had not joined the measure," BdP explained to a bank customer who asked the question on the regulator's portal. "This is because the applicable interest rate remains unchanged and on top of that, you have to pay interest on deferred capital repayments. So the total interest payments will always be higher," he explained.