Hungarians almost exclusively take out home loans and personal loans

The share of housing loans and personal loans in the retail credit market by amount rose to an unprecedented level of 82.5 percent in the first eleven months of 2025, while all other schemes only share the remaining 17 percent of the market – points out Mihály Barát, financial journalist at BiztosDöntés.hu, adding that five years earlier this ratio was slightly above 60 percent.

“The share of housing loans and personal loans in terms of amount only increased minimally compared to the first eleven months of 2024 – then their share within new placements was 82.3 percent – the reason for this is that the worker’s loan, which appeared last year and brought nearly 160 billion forints of new contracts by the end of November, slightly rearranged the ratios” – emphasizes Mihály Barát. Regardless of this – he adds – it is clear how much housing loans and personal loans dominate the entire market: of the more than 3,300 billion forints of housing and consumer loans issued by the end of last November, 1,701.2 billion were provided by housing loans, and 1,031.2 billion by personal loans.

According to the financial journalist of BiztosDöntés.hu, several factors contribute to the growing dominance of the two loan products. One is that the already strong demand for home loans surged in the fall due to the Otthon Start loan launched in September 2025. In October and November last year alone, banks concluded new home loan contracts worth more than 530 billion forints, and the new subsidized scheme accounted for the majority of this volume.

The steadily intense demand for personal loans is explained by the increasingly widespread availability of annual interest rates below 10 percent and the rise of online applications.

According to Mihály Barát, however, it should also be noted that although the retail credit market performed very well in 2024 and 2025, the dynamic growth is not true for all constructions. For example, the amount of new contracts for unsecured mortgage loans increased by 12.4 percent in the first eleven months of 2025, the amount of 94.2 billion forints was less than 3 percent of the total volume disbursed, compared to 3.5 percent a year earlier. New placements for baby loans also decreased by 8.5 percent – their share within the total contracted amount melted from 9.5 to 6.3 percent.

According to the financial journalist of BiztosDöntés.hu, home loans and personal loans may dominate the market in the period ahead: on the one hand, the buoyant effect of Otthon Start may remain unchanged (at most, its intensity may decrease slightly), and personal loans do not seem to have any effect that would significantly reduce demand.