Just 13 per cent of those surveyed (incl. 11 per cent of Estonian-language and 23% of Russian-language respondents) said that the borrower should be free to decide which property to buy and in what condition and that the bank should only decide on the price of the property. Women were more appreciative of the quality of the property and security of the transaction provided in the survey (legality of the structure, reliability of the seller or broker, quality of building, milieu, infrastructure) compared to male respondents. The participants in the survey saw that the quality of construction was utmost (4.7 points on a scale of 5); what was less important was the general milieu and detailed planning of the area (4.2 points).
Triin Messimas, Development Manager of Private Loans at SEB: “While before the economic crisis neither the applicants for a loan nor the banks paid attention to the indicators of the quality of the property and only the market value was important, now attention has changed. A responsible lender wishes that the client does not buy something that was built contrary to law or is not safe for any other reasons. It is good that our customers embrace this approach ‒ about a third of those surveyed believe that a bank should not give a loan to buy a defective property or should point out deficiencies. The legality of a structure was assessed to be at least 4.6 points out of 5 and this is only a bit lower than the estimation given to the relevance of the building quality. It is also noteworthy that although the general milieu of the region and the detailed plan are not the decisive factors involved in buying real estate, it becomes more important as far as the income and age of the buyer is involved.
*The survey was conducted in the period between 3 March and 4 April. The sample consisted of clients who had taken a home loan from SEB between 2011 and the present. There were 1,343 respondents in the survey.
