Sber’s top manager spoke about the new realities of preferential mortgages in Russia

In an interview with RBC, First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank Kirill Tsarev explained, why preferential mortgages became unprofitable and spoke about new conditions for issuing housing loans. According to the top manager, today banks are faced with restrictions on issuing mortgages due to new regulatory rules. In addition, the key rate affects lending.

As a result, banks decide to refuse issuance, and the market experiences a slowdown in demand. At the same time, the organization will continue to issue housing loans under preferential programs, recognizing the strategic importance of providing Russians with housing. We publish the details in our material.

New rules for issuing mortgage loans

Tsarev noted that the increase in the key rate caused a natural rise in the price of mortgages without government support, and the share of preferential mortgages increased to 75%. At the same time, the Central Bank changed the requirements for the down payment, and the amount of compensation for banks’ income from the state also changed, and premiums appeared on risk coefficients.

“All this led to the fact that for us, mortgages under state programs actually became unprofitable. Now this means that it makes no sense for us to issue new similar transactions on the same terms as before,” explained the first deputy chairman of the board of Sberbank.

How to fix the situation

As Kirill Tsarev explained, for the full functioning of government programs, a balance must be established in the housing market. We are talking about subsidizing or returning expenses of credit institutions from the state.

“I believe that ultimately we will come to some kind of balance in terms of finding price conditions. In the current regime, without some kind of subsidization or return of financing of part of the banks’ expenses from the state, we still will not achieve balance. But we’ll see. It is important here that no alternative schemes appear in parallel,” he emphasized.

The company noted that they expect a decrease in mortgage issuance volumes compared to last year. According to Tsarev’s calculations, in the segment of mortgages with state support the decrease will reach 30%-40%, and in the total volume of mortgages the scale will decrease by 20-30%.

“The fact that almost all the largest banks took this action in a similar manner speaks volumes about something else: if it is truly economically unprofitable, then it is logical that all the major market players at this moment stop acting in a way that is economically unprofitable for them. Are there any players ready to finance in the current mode? Let’s see in a month,” summed up the first deputy chairman of the board of Sber.