Medium-sized banks take advantage of the mortgage credit boom and gain market share over large entities

If something has characterized the mortgage market throughout 2025, it has been the double-digit growth that it has experienced throughout these months. He increase in housing prices It keeps demand alive due to lower financing costs. The Euribor, the sector reference, is currently moving above 2.1%, practically half from the peak of 4%, although the increases in recent weeks show that the interest rate cuts have hit the bottom. In these circumstances, the mortgage war has been experienced at different rates among entities, with medium-sized entities being the ones that have benefited the most.

According to data compiled by the consulting firm Inmarkamong the top ten banks, it is these types of entities that are gaining market share, with Abanca at the head. If in 2024, the Galician group recorded a mortgage quota of 2.3%, in 2025 it has risen to 3.5%, with 120 percentage points more business. They follow him INGwhich improves by six tenths from 5.1% to 5.7%, as well as Unicaja, which goes from 5.1% to 5.5%. They would complete the list Bankinter with 3.3%, three tenths more; Kutxabankin which case it rises two tenths, to 4.9%, while in Sabadell Bank It has been one tenth.

The evolution in the Vallesano has taken place in the middle of the BBVA takeover process, which ultimately did not go ahead. On the contrary, rural savings banks lost 1.4% of mortgage business and fell to 8.4%, although they maintain fourth position in the classification. Above are placed Santander Bankwhich does not vary from 13.8%, while in BBVA (14.7%) and CaixaBank (26.7%) goes back seven and one tenths. The information comes from a sample of 3,709 interviews carried out between April and June of this year.

Given these data, the different entities have expressed a different opinion. To the thread of quarterly earnings seasonin which falls in the interest margin are reflected, the joint x-ray shows division between the medium-sized ones, which have been the most aggressive with promotions, in contrast to other banks, which keep the best offers for certain types of clients. Herein second classification figure BBVAfrom which they have openly expressed their refusal to compete in the mortgage segment. “We have voluntarily lost quota because we do not see that we have opportunities to allocate capital (distribution of financial resources) in a profitable way,” the CEO, Onur Genç, acknowledged a few days ago.

The banker agrees with his counterpart at Bankinter, Gloria Ortiz, on the existence of a “irrational competition” in Spain in which they do not intend to participate. In Ortiz’s opinion, the price at which a mortgage is finally contracted is increasingly far from being an activity profitable, especially in the case of long-term fixed ones. Along the same lines, the president of Banco Santander, Ana Botín, recalled that many of the loans for housing are financed below the Euribor.

“Mortgages in Spain are the cheapest in Europe. The logical thing would be that they were not so far away, but the prices are competitive for the benefit of the clientele”, explained during the presentation of results, the CEO of CaixaBank, Gonzalo Gortázar. The manager has ruled out that there can be talk of a mortgage overheating after recognizing that they are not growing in this area.

According to data from the Bank of Spain (BdE), Spanish banks have granted mortgage financing in the first nine months of the year for more than 60,000 million, 23% higher. It does so after in September has granted credit a total of 6,435 millionthe highest figure for a month of September since 2007. In a year-on-year comparison, the rebound is close to 26%. These data support the recovery of the outstanding balance, which measures the volume of active mortgage loans, up to 511,273 million, an unprecedented threshold since the end of 2022.