Mortgage lending is collapsing: it fell 3% in August, and uncertainty about housing access is growing.

Mortgage loans, one of the key tools for accessing housing, are experiencing their worst period in years. In August, the number of loans granted fell 3% compared to the previous month, according to market data, confirming that the combination of rising interest rates, stricter bank requirements, and exchange rate pressure is drastically limiting financing for Argentine families.

The retraction comes amid electoral uncertainty and with Banco Nación tightening its granting conditions: it now requires a near-perfect score, which excludes a significant portion of potential applicants.

The real estate market indicates that a "ceiling" has been reached in mortgage lending. Daniel Bryn of Invertire Real Estate explained that banks "are not formally rejecting all loans, but rather making them more restrictive and difficult to sustain." The lack of long-term funding, the rising country risk, and electoral uncertainty are leading the financial system to prefer to limit the volume of loans to 20 or 30 years as much as possible.

The impact is already reflected in the numbers: US$308.9 million in mortgage loans were disbursed in August, equivalent to approximately 4,000 loans , with an average interest rate of 6.3%, which represents 1.5 percentage points higher than in September 2024. However, the rate offered by banks is around 8.6%. This gap, according to Federico González Rouco , an economist at Empiria, is due to the time it takes for a loan to be approved and disbursed.

Experts warn that the worst is yet to come. González Rouco stated that " the strongest impact will come in September, due to increased banking restrictions. If this is the ceiling, it will be well below the 2017-2018 peak ."

Fabián Achával , a real estate expert, agreed that lending will "slow down significantly," also affecting linked transactions within the market. In his view, everything will depend on how the elections unfold and whether the new scenario stabilizes the economy.

The rise of the dollar has added another blow to already weakened financing. Many families who qualified for credit a few months ago are now out of the loop, unable to meet the new requirements or afford increasingly high payments.

" If there's no government that ensures banks have liquidity, it's practically impossible to sustain mortgage financing . I think this is the ceiling: transactions are already declining," González Rouco warned.

The combination is lethal: prohibitive rates, more stringent filters, and a rising currency that makes real estate more expensive. The result is a declining mortgage market, with transactions plateauing and others collapsing altogether.

For specialists, the mortgage lending landscape will largely depend on the election results. It will also depend on the government's decisions regarding bank liquidity and monetary policy. Meanwhile, thousands of Argentine families are finding their chances of owning their own homes increasingly remote.