For the entire year 2024, banks and building co-operative banks in the Czech Republic have provided new mortgage loans worth CZK 228 billion (€9 billion), which represents a year-on-year increase of 83%, reports ČBA (Czech Bank Association) in its latest Hypomonitor from December 2024, which captures data from all domestic banks and building co-operative banks providing mortgage loans.
Together with refinanced loans for CZK 47 billion (€1.86 billion), the total volume of the mortgage market reached CZK 275 billion (€10.9 billion), which is a significant increase compared to CZK 150 billion (€5.9 billion) in 2023. Even after considering the increase in real estate prices, the real growth of the market was still robust. This corresponds to an increase in the number of new mortgages in 2024 by 53% to 62 thousand, accompanied by a 20% increase in the average mortgage amount to CZK 3.7 million in 2024.
In December 2024, banks provided new mortgages for CZK 19.7 billion (€780 million). In addition, clients refinanced their mortgages of CZK 4.1 billion (€162 million). Compared to November, activity fell by 8%, which can be explained by the seasonal effect of Christmas. The average mortgage rate fell slightly further to 4.80% from November's 4.85%. Its average value for 2024 reached 5.07% compared to its average value of 5.8% in 2023. If the market maintains its December dynamics, the volume of new mortgages could reach the level of CZK 250 billion in 2025 (€9.9 billion), which would represent a 10 % year-on-year increase.
Mortgage rates react with a delay of several months mainly to the development of market interest rates of longer maturities. Several factors are reflected in them, not only the development of the CNB interest rate but also a combination of the inflation outlook, the economy and exchange rate dynamics. At the moment, for example, the market is signalling a decrease in the CNB interest rate by approximately 0.6 percentage points during 2025, following the milder December growth of the Czech consumer price index.
