The euribor is heading for another monthly rise and will tighten the cost of mortgages

The index anticipates a rise in the price of money in September, when the cost of housing loans will be reviewed. The Euribor adds and continues on its way to the 3% quota. The first fortnight of August ends with a rise in the provisional monthly average rate to 2.92%, above the 2.85% of June, when the mortgage index reached the highest level of the year and since September 2024.

It is true that the upward movements are now much shorter than in the months of March and April, when the Euribor began to discount with great force the scenario of rate hikes that the European Central Bank (ECB) specified last June with a rise in the price of money to 2.25%. Now, the Euribor anticipates new movements. As Laura Martínez, of the mortgage comparator and broker iAhorro, points out, "the Euribor begins to anticipate an autumn in which the European Central Bank (ECB) could toughen the price of money".

Indeed, the market is preparing for another 25 basis point hike, which is already largely reflected in the 12-month Euribor, on which the cost of variable mortgages and new mortgages in any of the modalities depends: fixed, variable and mixed. In the first case, the news is not good. The monthly average of the indicator stands at 2.92%, well above the 2.11% of August last year.

If the month ends at current levels, a average mortgage of 150,000 euros over 25 years, with a differential of 1% over the Euribor and annual review, would rise by around 65 euros per month, to 910 euros per year. Under the same conditions, a loan that is reviewed every six months would become more expensive by around 57 euros per month.

In the case of the price of new mortgages, uncertainty is maximum in the short and medium term. During the first half of the year, all banks have tightened loan conditions. According to the latest official data from the Bank of Spain, the average cost of new housing purchase loans stood at 2.89% in June, compared to 2.85% in May.

This is the highest percentage since December 2024. The average mortgage rate has not stopped growing this year, compared to 2.60% at the end of 2025. Since then, it has risen by 10.8%. However, financial sources assure that a small truce is taking place in this central part of the summer, in which the commercial activity of banks is significantly reduced.

They also explain that it will be at the start of September when financial institutions will review the cost of their mortgages again. "In the coming months, everything points to the fact that institutions will maintain maximum prudence in the marketing of mortgages, especially fixed-rate ones. Although the sector considers that current prices already incorporate a good part of the existing risks, new increases cannot be ruled out due to the level of Euribor and the decisions that the ECB may adopt.

In this context, it is worth remembering that a few tenths of a difference in interest can translate into a significant long-term extra cost," they point out from the Kelisto comparator. In any case, experts agree that it is very difficult to make predictions in a geopolitical scenario as unstable and changing as the current one.

However, they warn that the Euribor already clearly reflects that, beyond the duration of the Middle East conflict, the world economy will emerge seriously damaged from this process, with high inflation rates that will require monetary policy responses. RN Tu Solución Hipotecaria considers that the most likely scenario is that of a Euribor moving around 3% in the coming months, although with oscillations derived from the international context.

"It will depend a lot on how the oil crisis and the situation in the Strait of Hormuz evolve. Unless there is a significant change in the economy or inflation, we do not expect either a strong rise or a rapid fall like those we saw a few months ago," they explain at the firm.