How long a term and are they fixed or adjustable? Most common in the US is a 30 year fixed term, and was curious as to what was common in Europe. Thanks in advance!
Norway the common one is market rate (not fixed) and between 20-30 years.
In order to get a mortgage you will need to have at least 15% down-payment (so you can only loan up to 85% of the price of the house). In addition maximum 5 times your gross income, and also that the bank will check that you can handle a 5 percentage point increase without going bust. You can deduct interest payments from your income as far as taxes goes.
(A drawback/advantage of this system is that people’s private economy is very affected by the Central Bank’s interest rate settings).
I’ve heard Denmark has an interesting system, so keen on any Danes pitching in.
The standard is a 25-30 year term but longer or shorter is perfectly possible. Most people are on fixed rates, but generally you can only get a fixed rate for a few years at a time (say 2 or 5) – I was lucky enough to get a 5 year fixed rate in 2021 when rates were remarkably low, unfortunately this means I’m in for a fright in 2026…
Buying a house in Scotland is a bit different from the rest of the UK; I won’t go into too many of the specifics, but one major difference is that you can only get a mortgage based on the “home report value” of the house, meaning if you pay £10k over that value you need to come up with that £10k in addition to your deposit.
I just used the simulator from my bank (BBVA) using all average numbers for Spain and here’s the breakdown:
For 1 mortgage in Madrid, second-hand property, with a market value of 200.000€, a loan of 160.000€ (80% is the maximum), 30 years (you can’t go above 30), 1 owner, net monthly salary of 1.762€, you have 4 options:
Fixed with home insurance and repayment insurance: 3,64% interest rate, 644,74€ monthly payment.
Fixed with no insurance: 4,21% interest rate, 730,66€ monthly payment.
Variable with home insurance and repayment insurance: 3,76% interest rate, 672,22€ monthly payment.
Variable with no insurance: 4,44% interest rate, 758,64€.
For this mortgage in Madrid you would need a down payment of 53.753,21€ (40.000€ from the 20% you aren’t being provided and 13.753,21€ from other costs such as notary, registration, valuation, taxes, etc).
That’s the average however not the most common as we would have to calculate for a 120.000€ house/apartment and a net monthly salary of 1.195€.
In that situation, for 1 mortgage in Madrid, second-hand property, with a market value of 120.000€, a loan of 80.000€ (70% is the maximum), 30 years (you can set it to 40 as maximum), 1 owner, net monthly salary of 1.195€, you have 4 options:
Fixed with insurance: 4,55% interest, 338,49€ monthly.
Fixed without insurance: 4,7% interest, 383,6€ monthly.
Variable with insurance: 4,49% interest, 352,91€ monthly.
Variable without insurance: 4,91% interest, 398,29€ monthly.
For this mortgage in Madrid you would need a down payment of 44.866,81€ (36.000 from the 30% you aren’t being provided and 8.866,81€ from other costs).
This is assuming you are a 30 year old male with no kids looking to buy in Madrid, numbers would change depending if there’s 2 incomes, if there’s kids, if it isn’t in Madrid and it is somewhere else, etc.
The issue people have is that it is nearly impossible to save enough money for the down payment and some banks have started to offer mortgages up to 90% and the government also made a plan for young people to be able to get a mortgage for 100% but it’s still hard to get a house/apartment because not only rent is very high right now, prices keep increasing while salaries have been stagnant for the last 17 years and there’s not much job security as there’s still lots of unemployment.
If you earn the most common salary in Spain, which is 1.195€, you could, at best, save up 100€ per month, and you would be living a VERY down to earth lifestyle. That means you would, best case scenario, have to save up for 448 months, which equals to 37 years. That’s 37 years of surviving, not living, because you can’t account for unexpected costs, which would only make the wait longer. If you have a partner and such partner also earns a common Spanish salary, you could, at best, save up 200€ per month, with which you would still need 19 years of perfect planning without unexpected costs and of course, no kids whatsoever, to have enough money for the down payment. The funniest part is, someone earning an average salary, can probably save 300€ if they live a VERY down to earth lifestyle, meaning it would still take them 179 months, which equals to 15 years, 7,5 with a partner.
The reality is most people don’t even get to save those 100€ per month because life happens and you can’t get the down payment for the mortgage, therefore you get no mortgage. What many do however is stay at their parents house while working, therefore being able to save what otherwise they would be paying on rent. The current emancipation age for Spain is 33.
What has also been happening recently is that people started to avoid the banks and simply save up enough money to pay the house in full, with help from the family.
[removed]
In The Netherlands, mortgages are usually 30 years. The mortgage is a maximum of 100% of the value of the property, but you can increase this amount if you’re planning to renovate. In that case they estimate the value of the house after renovation.
Dutch people tend to fix the interest rate for as long as possible. Most common by far is 10 or 20 years. Rates are now between 3,5%-4,0% (historically low, but a big increase from the 1,5% a few years ago).
Big difference with the US is that property taxes are basically non-existent (0,09%) and you don’t need a credit score.
In Hungary I think most people aim for 20-25 years, most banks offer 10 year fixed rates, after that it gets readjusted and fixed another 10, repeated until it’s paid off. There’s one bank that also allows for full fixed, but at generally higher interest. All in local currency. Current rate is 6-7%.
Additionally, there’s a very popular government loan at ~3-4% for people who promise to take on children in the next couple of years. Maximum loan amounts depends on how many kids you promise to deliver with the given timeframe (more kids promised = more time to deliver = higher loan). Also, you get partial loan forgiveness at certain number of total children. Max amount of loan is roughly the price of a 50m2 flat in the capital, with a promise of 3 kids.
Paying of the mortgage used to be optional but now you have to pay 1% per year until you have reached 50% of the value for the property for new mortgages. You can have either fixed interest rates for a certain period (googling quickly I found a maximum of ten years) or an unfixed one.
Most common is still flexible interest rate that changes every three months and follows the market rate. Fixed rates are avialable for 1-10 years though I’ve never heard of anyone having longer fixed rates.
Loan terms are usually 40-50 years but it is unusual to pay of your mortgage. You can loan up to 85% of the value and need to pay 2% per year until you reach 70% of the value at which point you have to pay 1% until you reach 50% after which you can choose to only pay interest. After your term ends you can apply for a new loan. It is also common to change bank to get better terms, which is easily done thanks to the flexible interest rates and you don’t get penalised for it.
One interesting thing in Croatia is that the bank will send their evaluators to put a value on the property and they will pay max 80-85% of that evaluatio, buuut if you are getting the house for less than what they value it at then you can basically get 100% of the purchase price from them. So for example, you are buying a house for 200.000 EUR, the bank values it at 240.000, thus you will get approved the 200.000, in this care the full purchase amount.
one thing about this is that you will be pushed to buy loan insurance (which adds about +5 to 10% to your monthly payments), so you need to think hard if it’s better to pay an extra 5-10% over 20-30 years or just cough up that 20% down payment to begin with.
other than this, the loan process is same as anywhere else, it has a fixed rate period for a few years and then goes to the fluctuating rate…
For us it’s probably 20 – 30 year variable, with a few years fixed at the start. Maybe 20 years ago it might have been more common to have a 15 -25 year mortgage, and tracker rates were were popular. These are a sub type of variable rate mortgage the following the ECB rate. These became less popular when interest rates fell after the 2008 recession as banks were more reluctant to give them out. Mortgage lengths have also trended up since then because the price of housing has increased faster than the median wage.
We’re also similar to other countries in that you can only borrow a maximum of 3.5 times the annual household income when buying a house (4 times if it’s your first house), with a minimum 10% deposit. 15% of mortgages can breach these rules, with what’s know as an exemption, but given that poor lending and oversight caused the 2008 recession, I would suspect that the banks would be very conservative when considering this.
Reading all of these makes me realize how much more the USA mortgage laws are consumer friendly than Europe:
1. Much lower down payment…I bought my first house in the USA for only 3% down
2. Fixed mortgage rates for the life of the loan.
Edit: if r/askeurope is true to form, I am ready to hear how wrong this is compared to Europe! 🤷🏾
20-30 years, but it’s not impossible to renegotiate a mortgage and do a “restart” with different terms
13 comments
I’m gonna be lazy and just link to [my comment in a similar thread from January](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/19d5y6h/whats_the_typical_mortgage_length_and_terms_in/kj6ef6d/).
Norway the common one is market rate (not fixed) and between 20-30 years.
In order to get a mortgage you will need to have at least 15% down-payment (so you can only loan up to 85% of the price of the house). In addition maximum 5 times your gross income, and also that the bank will check that you can handle a 5 percentage point increase without going bust. You can deduct interest payments from your income as far as taxes goes.
(A drawback/advantage of this system is that people’s private economy is very affected by the Central Bank’s interest rate settings).
I’ve heard Denmark has an interesting system, so keen on any Danes pitching in.
The standard is a 25-30 year term but longer or shorter is perfectly possible. Most people are on fixed rates, but generally you can only get a fixed rate for a few years at a time (say 2 or 5) – I was lucky enough to get a 5 year fixed rate in 2021 when rates were remarkably low, unfortunately this means I’m in for a fright in 2026…
Buying a house in Scotland is a bit different from the rest of the UK; I won’t go into too many of the specifics, but one major difference is that you can only get a mortgage based on the “home report value” of the house, meaning if you pay £10k over that value you need to come up with that £10k in addition to your deposit.
I just used the simulator from my bank (BBVA) using all average numbers for Spain and here’s the breakdown:
For 1 mortgage in Madrid, second-hand property, with a market value of 200.000€, a loan of 160.000€ (80% is the maximum), 30 years (you can’t go above 30), 1 owner, net monthly salary of 1.762€, you have 4 options:
Fixed with home insurance and repayment insurance: 3,64% interest rate, 644,74€ monthly payment.
Fixed with no insurance: 4,21% interest rate, 730,66€ monthly payment.
Variable with home insurance and repayment insurance: 3,76% interest rate, 672,22€ monthly payment.
Variable with no insurance: 4,44% interest rate, 758,64€.
For this mortgage in Madrid you would need a down payment of 53.753,21€ (40.000€ from the 20% you aren’t being provided and 13.753,21€ from other costs such as notary, registration, valuation, taxes, etc).
That’s the average however not the most common as we would have to calculate for a 120.000€ house/apartment and a net monthly salary of 1.195€.
In that situation, for 1 mortgage in Madrid, second-hand property, with a market value of 120.000€, a loan of 80.000€ (70% is the maximum), 30 years (you can set it to 40 as maximum), 1 owner, net monthly salary of 1.195€, you have 4 options:
Fixed with insurance: 4,55% interest, 338,49€ monthly.
Fixed without insurance: 4,7% interest, 383,6€ monthly.
Variable with insurance: 4,49% interest, 352,91€ monthly.
Variable without insurance: 4,91% interest, 398,29€ monthly.
For this mortgage in Madrid you would need a down payment of 44.866,81€ (36.000 from the 30% you aren’t being provided and 8.866,81€ from other costs).
This is assuming you are a 30 year old male with no kids looking to buy in Madrid, numbers would change depending if there’s 2 incomes, if there’s kids, if it isn’t in Madrid and it is somewhere else, etc.
The issue people have is that it is nearly impossible to save enough money for the down payment and some banks have started to offer mortgages up to 90% and the government also made a plan for young people to be able to get a mortgage for 100% but it’s still hard to get a house/apartment because not only rent is very high right now, prices keep increasing while salaries have been stagnant for the last 17 years and there’s not much job security as there’s still lots of unemployment.
If you earn the most common salary in Spain, which is 1.195€, you could, at best, save up 100€ per month, and you would be living a VERY down to earth lifestyle. That means you would, best case scenario, have to save up for 448 months, which equals to 37 years. That’s 37 years of surviving, not living, because you can’t account for unexpected costs, which would only make the wait longer. If you have a partner and such partner also earns a common Spanish salary, you could, at best, save up 200€ per month, with which you would still need 19 years of perfect planning without unexpected costs and of course, no kids whatsoever, to have enough money for the down payment. The funniest part is, someone earning an average salary, can probably save 300€ if they live a VERY down to earth lifestyle, meaning it would still take them 179 months, which equals to 15 years, 7,5 with a partner.
The reality is most people don’t even get to save those 100€ per month because life happens and you can’t get the down payment for the mortgage, therefore you get no mortgage. What many do however is stay at their parents house while working, therefore being able to save what otherwise they would be paying on rent. The current emancipation age for Spain is 33.
What has also been happening recently is that people started to avoid the banks and simply save up enough money to pay the house in full, with help from the family.
[removed]
In The Netherlands, mortgages are usually 30 years. The mortgage is a maximum of 100% of the value of the property, but you can increase this amount if you’re planning to renovate. In that case they estimate the value of the house after renovation.
Dutch people tend to fix the interest rate for as long as possible. Most common by far is 10 or 20 years. Rates are now between 3,5%-4,0% (historically low, but a big increase from the 1,5% a few years ago).
Big difference with the US is that property taxes are basically non-existent (0,09%) and you don’t need a credit score.
In Hungary I think most people aim for 20-25 years, most banks offer 10 year fixed rates, after that it gets readjusted and fixed another 10, repeated until it’s paid off. There’s one bank that also allows for full fixed, but at generally higher interest. All in local currency. Current rate is 6-7%.
Additionally, there’s a very popular government loan at ~3-4% for people who promise to take on children in the next couple of years. Maximum loan amounts depends on how many kids you promise to deliver with the given timeframe (more kids promised = more time to deliver = higher loan). Also, you get partial loan forgiveness at certain number of total children. Max amount of loan is roughly the price of a 50m2 flat in the capital, with a promise of 3 kids.
Paying of the mortgage used to be optional but now you have to pay 1% per year until you have reached 50% of the value for the property for new mortgages. You can have either fixed interest rates for a certain period (googling quickly I found a maximum of ten years) or an unfixed one.
Most common is still flexible interest rate that changes every three months and follows the market rate. Fixed rates are avialable for 1-10 years though I’ve never heard of anyone having longer fixed rates.
Loan terms are usually 40-50 years but it is unusual to pay of your mortgage. You can loan up to 85% of the value and need to pay 2% per year until you reach 70% of the value at which point you have to pay 1% until you reach 50% after which you can choose to only pay interest. After your term ends you can apply for a new loan. It is also common to change bank to get better terms, which is easily done thanks to the flexible interest rates and you don’t get penalised for it.
One interesting thing in Croatia is that the bank will send their evaluators to put a value on the property and they will pay max 80-85% of that evaluatio, buuut if you are getting the house for less than what they value it at then you can basically get 100% of the purchase price from them. So for example, you are buying a house for 200.000 EUR, the bank values it at 240.000, thus you will get approved the 200.000, in this care the full purchase amount.
one thing about this is that you will be pushed to buy loan insurance (which adds about +5 to 10% to your monthly payments), so you need to think hard if it’s better to pay an extra 5-10% over 20-30 years or just cough up that 20% down payment to begin with.
other than this, the loan process is same as anywhere else, it has a fixed rate period for a few years and then goes to the fluctuating rate…
For us it’s probably 20 – 30 year variable, with a few years fixed at the start. Maybe 20 years ago it might have been more common to have a 15 -25 year mortgage, and tracker rates were were popular. These are a sub type of variable rate mortgage the following the ECB rate. These became less popular when interest rates fell after the 2008 recession as banks were more reluctant to give them out. Mortgage lengths have also trended up since then because the price of housing has increased faster than the median wage.
We’re also similar to other countries in that you can only borrow a maximum of 3.5 times the annual household income when buying a house (4 times if it’s your first house), with a minimum 10% deposit. 15% of mortgages can breach these rules, with what’s know as an exemption, but given that poor lending and oversight caused the 2008 recession, I would suspect that the banks would be very conservative when considering this.
Reading all of these makes me realize how much more the USA mortgage laws are consumer friendly than Europe:
1. Much lower down payment…I bought my first house in the USA for only 3% down
2. Fixed mortgage rates for the life of the loan.
Edit: if r/askeurope is true to form, I am ready to hear how wrong this is compared to Europe! 🤷🏾
20-30 years, but it’s not impossible to renegotiate a mortgage and do a “restart” with different terms