The average interest rate on new mortgages in Ireland fell for the third month in-a-row in December, according to the latest data from the Central Bank.
The average rate here is now at 4.19% as of the end of December, 0.06 percentage points lower compared to November. This meant Ireland had the 10th lowest rates in the euro zone at the end of last year.
Fixed rate mortgages made up 81% of the total volume of new home loans during the period and the average rate on them was 4.14%.
That means they are now 1.53% higher than in December of last year.
On average new variable rate mortgages carried a rate of 4.4%, up 0.55% on the same month in 2023, but down seven basis points on November.
The figures show that new mortgages worth a total of €980m were agreed in December, up 14% on November, but down 22% on the same month a year ago.
The Central Bank also published new data which compares average mortgage interest rates charged by non-bank lenders compared to the main retail banks in December.
It shows that those who have mortgages from non-bank lenders are paying 4.52% on average, compared to 3.6% for those with mortgages from banks.
The average rate charged by non-bank lenders on the more than 42,000 variable mortgages they hold was 6.09%, compared to 4.07% in the banks.
The 36,244 tracker mortgage customers in non-bank lenders are paying 5.59% on average, just below the average rate of 5.6% in the banks.
The 38,249 fixed mortgage holders in the non-bank lenders are paying 2.57% on average, compared to 2.95% paid on average by equivalent borrowers from banks.
Overall, the average interest rate charged by non-banks who are actively lending was 3.03%, but at the non-lending non-banks it was 5.56%.
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