In the past year, people all over East Germany put off their dream of owning their own four walls. The reasons are inflation, general uncertainty, higher construction costs and higher interest rates.
Berlin/Schwerin (dpa/mv) - Increased construction costs and interest rates have also weakened the demand for construction loans in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Last year, the savings banks in the northeast granted housing loans amounting to 1.2 billion euros, as the East German Savings Banks Association announced on Tuesday in Berlin. This is a decrease of 5.5 percent compared to the previous year. Overall, the savings banks in the state granted new loans amounting to 2.2 billion euros - the decrease of 1.4 percent compared to the previous year was less than in construction loans.
The East German Savings Banks Association assumes that many customers in the east had to draw on their savings in the crisis year 2022 due to increased everyday costs. The association announced that the sum of savings deposits had fallen by 1.3 billion euros or around 3 percent in 2022. Overall, customer deposits have risen by 1.9 percent, but this is the lowest growth in the past ten years. In the previous year, deposits grew by 6.2 percent.
"We assume that many customers had to fall back on their savings at times to cover costs because of the increased cost of living and the uncertainties," said association managing director Wolfgang Zender at a press conference in Berlin. In addition, there was a "consumption catch-up effect" in the first half of 2022, as a result of which savings accumulated during the Corona period were spent.
Zender also emphasized that apparently some customers initially postponed the purchase of their own home. The association's savings banks granted private customers loans of 6.2 billion euros - 5.4 percent less than a year earlier. However, interest in loans only declined in the fourth quarter. "The strong inflation and the general uncertainty were the reasons for the reduced demand for loans from private households," said Zender.
The amount of loans for companies and the self-employed remained constant. Overall, the 43 savings banks in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt committed 14.36 billion in loans - 0.7 percent less than in 2021.
