Bank360: Hungarian households are at the forefront of Europe in borrowing

Hungarian banks closed a very strong second quarter in terms of retail loans, according to the data of the recently published survey of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB). The loans of households increased by about HUF 281 billion in three months as the balance of disbursements and repayments. With this, the annual growth rate of the loan portfolio accelerated to 6.0 percent from 4.2 percent at the end of the previous quarter. According to the MNB, this is such a rapid expansion that the domestic credit dynamics is in the first quarter of the European Union comparison, and was above the average growth rate observed in the countries of the Visegrád region (4.2 percent).

The CSOK Plusz and the APR ceiling have come into the home loan market

The amount of new residential credit contracts in the second quarter was HUF 731 billion, 76 percent more than in the same period of 2023. However, it is also true that last year due to high interest rates, home loans fell badly. This year, however, the tide turned, and 167 percent more home loans were sold than last year. However, personal loans were already going well last year, but disbursements increased by 55 percent this year.

Compared to the stock, the number of home loan contracts concluded in the second quarter increased more modestly, by 57 percent compared to the same period of the previous year. In other words, the increased mutual funds played a decisive role in the significant increase in lending: while in June 2023 the average contractual amount of construction loans was 11.3 million forints, in June 2024 customers already borrowed 18.4 million forints.