A main purpose of the new loan rules is to facilitate for young people to enter the housing market. But among the over 1,000 respondents, it is not primarily the young who are positive, but the older ones.
In the youngest age group, 18-34-year-olds, 19 percent think the proposals are good and as many that they are bad, while 42 percent are ambivalent.
The corresponding figures in the oldest group, 56-79-year-olds, are 31, 14, and 37 percent, respectively.
More than half in the youngest group believe that the proposals would have an impact on their housing situation and 20 percent see a smoother path to buying a home. As many are negative, citing the risk of higher housing prices.
Overall, 26 percent think the proposals are good, 17 percent that they are bad, and 39 percent that some parts are good and others bad.
"New proposals are often met with some skepticism at first. But I think most people agree that something needs to be done to lower the thresholds for young people to enter the housing market", says Bjurfors CEO Fredrik Kullman in a press release.
The survey is based on a nationally representative web panel with 1,036 people recruited through random sampling.
The government's investigator proposes that the mortgage ceiling be raised from 85 to 90 percent and a repayment requirement of 1 percent for mortgages exceeding 50 percent of the property's value.
Furthermore, a new debt-to-income ratio ceiling is proposed, which means that it should not be possible to borrow more than 5.5 times the annual gross income, with room for banks to make exceptions for 10 percent of the loans.
Today's mortgage ceiling of 85 percent was introduced in 2010 and means that households are not allowed to borrow more than 85 percent of the property's value with the property as collateral. This was complemented in 2016 by a repayment requirement, which means that households that borrow more than 50 percent of the property's value must repay at least 1 percent of the original loan each year. Those who borrow more than 70 percent must repay at least 2 percent. The repayment requirement was tightened further in 2018 with a rule stating that households with mortgages larger than 4.5 times the gross income must repay 1 percent in addition to the first repayment requirement.
Source: Financial Supervisory Authority
