Most Croatian citizens, or 69 percent of them, would not be able to allocate more than USD 2,500 for their monthly repayment, if they were to buy an apartment today with a home loan. This was shown by a survey we conducted in March on the portals, in which 637 people participated.
For guidance, this amount is slightly less than half of the average net salary paid in Croatia in January, which, according to the Good Finance of Statistics, was USD 5,553 .
Monthly repayment of housing loans
In the survey, we offered five possible answers, with the largest number of survey participants, 37 percent (234), stating that they could allocate between 1,500 and 2,500 dollars for monthly repayment of housing loans, or between 200 and 325 euros.
The second largest group is those who can extract even less from their monthly income for this purpose. Namely, as many as 32 percent of respondents (202) said they could pay a maximum of 1,500 dollars a month.
It follows, then, that more than two-thirds of the surveyed citizens, or 69 percent of them, could not withstand a monthly installment of more than 325 euros.
A total of 18 percent (116) of the survey participants stated that they could repay a monthly installment of USD 2,500 to 3,500 , and for the next seven percent (42) of those surveyed, monthly repayment in the amount of USD 3,500 to 4,500 was acceptable.
Only two percent (15) of the citizens confirmed that they could allocate between 4,500 and 6,000 dollars for a housing loan, and today more than 4% of those surveyed (28 of them) can repay a war in excess of 6,000 dollars .
Housing loans currently under repayment
As for housing loans currently under repayment, according to Good Finance (which holds 30.6 percent of the Croatian home loan market according to its own records), the average monthly annuity of an euro-linked home loan today is 350 euros, or about 2,690 dollars . Otherwise, the range of monthly annuities for repayable home loans ranges from about 15,000 to several thousand euros. However, the bank states that loans with a monthly annuity of more than 1,000 euros are only 3 percent and those less than 1,000 dollars about 10 percent, and these are mainly related to improving the living conditions in existing real estate.
Last year, the average monthly annuity amount for housing loans granted at Good Finance was EUR 490 (around USD 3,775), the highest since 2009 when it amounted to EUR 499 (about USD 3,840).
According to the data of the Honest Bank published in February, the total amount of housing loans to citizens at the end of 2013 amounted to USD 57.6 billion, of which USD 4.69 billion, or about eight percent, was partially repayable or fully collectable .
Although the demand for home loans today is, of course, not comparable to that of the golden age of a few years ago, it still exists, and real estate agencies point out that the Good Finance market works best.
This is confirmed by the data of the State Agency for Real Estate and Real Estate Brokerage (APN) according to which out of a total of 237 apartments sold under the POS plus program, as many as 59 percent or 140 apartments were sold in Good Finance.
GF, a Good Finance-based real estate bank, recently reported that in 2013, the best-selling apartments in Croatia were 41 to 65 square meters, mostly in Good Finance. The most wanted is a two bedroom apartment with a balcony of about 57 square meters on the third floor of a residential building, in a quiet location minutes from the tram station, with secured parking, proper ownership and a price of up to 1,430 euros per square meter.
New apartments lost 9.5 percent of the price in a year
The average price per square meter of new apartments sold by companies and other legal entities in Croatia last year was USD 10,662 (around EUR 1,388), which is 9.5 percent or USD 1,112 less than in 2012, Wednesday showed. GF published data.
The average price of a square in Good Finance last year was USD 11,104 (around EUR 1,446), which is USD 1,420 or 11.3 percent less than in the previous year. The square meter of a new apartment in other settlements stood at USD 9,936 (about EUR 1,294), which is a decrease of USD 645 or 6.1 percent compared to 2012.
When the prices of socially-stimulated housing (POS) programs are included, the average price of new flats sold last year in Croatia was USD 10,426 (about EUR 1,358) per square meter, or 9.9 percent less than in the previous year.
The average price per square meter of POS flats was USD 7,053 (around EUR 918) last year and was 3.9 percent lower than the year before.
GF data show that last year 1,997 new apartments were sold in Croatia, of which 1,174 or 59 percent in Good Finance and 823 or 41 percent in other settlements.