Easy money gone. How much can Euribor prices go up?

The gains won’t stop here, as the European Central Bank (ECB) is also expected to raise interest rates, which on Thursday announced Increase the interest rate by 50 basis points – The first increase in 11 years and the most intense since 2000. This trend is expected to continue in the coming months, according to estimates of experts in financial markets contacted by CNN Portugal.

easy money gone

“The time for easy money is over and we’ll see how long that will take. That means for loans that are rated at a variable rate, there will be an increase in costs that can be quite significant, because we’re talking about bank loans that may even have double the monthly fee – or interest, At least – because the ECB is not going to stop there – a 0.6% increase is already required in the near future,” notes Marco Silva, consultant and financial markets specialist.

This means that “if all goes according to plan,” the ECB’s interest rates should be between 2 and 2.5%, the strategy and investment adviser estimates, adding, however, that these values ​​are never certain. Not least because “it is not known how the European Central Bank will react to a possible economic recession”.

For the specialist, this rate increase is “nothing unusual” when compared to a 1.5% increase in just four months by the Federal Reserve (the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States). “These are very strong rallies and there is, at the moment, a very aggressive mentality, so people do not expect the ECB to continue to weaken – it has already got into the rhythm and it should also continue to be more aggressive,” he points out.

In turn, Filipe Martins, a specialist in financial markets information, expects that “the rise in interest rates should be relatively moderate”, and may stabilize between 1.5 and 1.75%, which will translate into Euribor rates that may remain between 1.5 to 2% next year. “Only if the economy accelerates a lot – which is not expected at the moment – is we can make a difference in this scenario,” he says.

But he cautions that this is not an optimistic view of the economy. In fact, “This reading stems from a certain amount of pessimism for the economy — interest rates won’t go up much, because economic activity will probably struggle in the near future. It’s a glass half full and half empty. On the one hand, we’ll have interest rates that won’t go up as much. , but that would be because the economy would not be in a good shape,” he explains.

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How high are the premiums?

Assuming a 6-month Euribor scenario at the end of 2023, this is 2.5 percentage points higher than the rate at the beginning of 2022. This will cost Portuguese families more money. The increase in benefits will be progressive, not all at once, because benefits are reviewed periodically. But the cost will come.

If the 6-month Euribor reaches 2% at the end of 2023, this implies about 200 euros per month in installments per 100 thousand euros of outstanding capital compared to the beginning of 2021.

Anyone who owes €200,000, for example, will pay about €400 more at the end of next year than they paid at the beginning of this year. and so on.