Mortgages taken out last August totaled NIS 5.97 billion

Mortgages taken out last August totaled NIS 5.97 billion in 8,249 transactions. This is according to data released today by the Bank of Israel. This is a decrease of NIS 700 million (10.4%) compared with July when loans totaling NIS 6.668 billion were taken, which was the highest in the last four years. When the last time a higher figure was recorded was June 2015 - then the volume of mortgages taken was about NIS 7 billion.
However, the mortgage rate is still very high compared to last year. Since the beginning of the year, banks have given mortgages amounting to 44.8 billion, ten percent more than in the first 8 months of 2018, when mortgages totaling NIS 40.3 billion were taken. 2018 ended with mortgages totaling almost NIS 60 billion. If the mortgage-taking rate in 2019 keeps the cumulative amount will reach NIS 66 billion.