Trends in residential real estate lending standards and implications for financial stability

It is often maintained that the recent real estate booms in many euro area countries have been accompanied by a loosening in lending standards. However, data for a thorough cross-country assessment of lending standards have been missing. This special feature uses a novel euro area dataset from a dedicated data collection covering significant institutions supervised by ECB Banking Supervision to analyse trends in real estate lending standards and derive implications for financial stability. First, lending standards for residential real estate loans in the euro area, in particular loan-to-income ratios, eased between 2016 and 2018. Given the significant deterioration in the euro area economic outlook since the coronavirus outbreak, this vulnerability seems of particular relevance. Second, lending standards appear to be looser in countries that saw stronger real estate expansions, suggesting that real estate vulnerabilities may have been growing in some euro area countries. Third, lending standards deteriorated less in countries with borrower-based macroprudential policies in place, highlighting the importance of early macroprudential policy action to help prevent the build-up of real estate vulnerabilities.