Margarita Delgado: Consumers and the post-COVID mortgage market

Opening address by Ms Margarita Delgado, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Spain, at the conference "Consumers and the post-COVID mortgage market", organized by ADICAE (Asociacion de Usuarios de Bancos Cajas y Seguros), 18 November 2020.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Good afternoon.

I would like to thank ADICAE for kindly inviting me to address you on the opening of this conference on the post-COVID mortgage market.

Allow me a minor comment regarding the conference title: I fear it is still too soon to talk about the mortgage market situation after COVID, although there is evidently no lack of will to do so.

The latest science news on the progress of the different vaccines gives us hope that we may shortly look to the future without seeing the pandemic on the horizon. Let us trust this will be so.

In any event, beyond the effects this health crisis may be having in the short term, housing affordability has been a very relevant subject in Spanish society for decades.