Last year’s results among housing savings banks and the best in the field of housing interim financing were continued by Wüstenrot in the first month of this year. In January, they approved 184 new interim financing loans worth 21 million kuna to citizens.
Wüstenrot housing savings bank has, in fact, approved a total of around 294 million kuna of these funds over the past 14.5 months since it was among the first to introduce new interim financing loans, helping to resolve nearly 2,900 housing issues. On the other hand, only 78 million kuna of regular loans were granted during the same period (with only three million in January of this year), which is almost four times less than what was approved for interim financing during the same period.
Based on these indicators, it can be concluded that interim financing is increasingly displacing regular loans, becoming the dominant method and form of (housing) lending to citizens. – Interest in regular loans is generally declining because, unlike interim financing loans, they cannot be obtained immediately, partly because the amounts of these loans are limited by the amount of savings, so the amount we can approve often does not meet the needs of the saver. Interim financing loans, on the other hand, are not limited (amounts up to 200,000 euros), have a longer repayment period (up to 24 years), and their interest rates (fixed and starting from 4.5 percent) are almost as favorable as regular loans.
– Thanks to the increased engagement of our network in interim financing operations, we now hold a leading position, with 43 percent of the Croatian market for so-called interim financing loans – says Herbert Weinzetl, a member of the Management Board of Wüstenrot.
Although, especially since the introduction of the possibility for interim financing of housing needs for citizen-savers, there has been significant progress in overall housing lending, analysts believe that this should not stop.
