Banks in Russia began to refuse applications for IT mortgages – Kommersant

PSB Bank, MTS Bank, Russian National Commercial Bank (RNCB) and Bank of St. Petersburg have stopped accepting applications for preferential IT mortgages, reports TASS. Sberbank and VTB also reduced the volume of loans issued under this program. Dom.RF (the operator of the distribution of budget limits for preferential mortgage programs) suggested that credit institutions could have used up their issuance limits.

“We are seeing high demand for the IT mortgage program with a rate of up to 5%. By now, against the backdrop of high demand, some large banks are really running out of limits on issuing loans under the state program,” commented Svetlana Nekrasova, managing director of Dom.RF, on the termination of banks’ acceptance of applications.

The chief expert of the Rusipoteka company, Sergei Gordeiko, believes that banks will return to accepting applications after redistributing or increasing the limits on the preferential program. “For all preferential programs, each bank has a lending limit. We have fulfilled the plan and are waiting for the limit to be increased if the government allocates it,” he explained. Sergey Gordeiko confirmed that MTS Bank and RNKB had reached the lending limit.

On January 16, Dom.RF CEO Vitaly Mutko said that the state-owned company may revise the rules for issuing limits to banks allocated by the country’s budget to support mortgages at state-subsidized rates. According to him, these funds can be redistributed in favor of banks that did not introduce a commission for developers for each home buyer who takes out a preferential mortgage. In particular, Sberbank, VTB and Alfa Bank, whose combined share in the country’s mortgage market reaches 85%, may lose government subsidies to cover expenses.

Read more in the Kommersant article. “Dom.RF expressed itself very clearly”.

Milena Kostereva