Mortgages with interest rates that are too high, when will they actually go down?

At its December meeting, the ECB decided to leave interest rates unchanged, after the continuous increases that were recorded throughout 2023.
Not a reduction, therefore, but not an increase either.
The situation of mortgage interest rates, therefore, remains stationary for now even if it is hoped that the installments that citizens are asked to pay will decrease as soon as possible.
The lowering of the cost of money, however, requires time to be significant and therefore we will have to wait.
For those who took out a variable rate mortgage before the increases, the blow was significant with monthly installments increasing by up to 70%, leading many families into real difficulty in bearing the burden.
To see a drop in installments on variable rate mortgages and for lower rates for new fixed rate mortgages, it is necessary to wait for the ECB to decide to lower rates, but according to some experts this should not happen in the coming months.
There is talk of a wait of at least another six months and this had already been announced at the end of 2023, when there was talk of a decline only after the first half of 2024.
For over a year, in fact, it has been more convenient to choose a fixed rate mortgage (always less convenient, except in the last period) rather than the variable too linked, in fact, to the oscillations which are less favorable at the moment.
The decisions taken by the ECB in the last year were aimed at keeping inflation growth at bay and bringing it back below the 2% threshold as soon as possible.
But the direct impact of this decision was had not only on financing but also on families and businesses given that home mortgages were also affected.
When will interest rates start to fall? Mortgage rates will certainly fall again sooner or later but this will not happen before the second half of 2024.
In fact, inflation is still expected to be quite high at the beginning of 2024, at 2.3%.
Precisely for this reason the ECB decided not to increase interest rates again and to keep them stationary, given that, although remaining above the set target of 2%, the level underwent a notable decrease from the initial 10.6%.
of October 2022 and this gives us hope.
Mortgage interest rates, among other things, reflecting on the cost of money and bank financing, also determine the performance of the economy, given that they also determine the evolution of the real estate market which is currently at a standstill precisely because of excessively high money prices.
2024, however, should be the year in which the monetary policies adopted will have their effects by impacting consumer prices.
2024 could be the year in which mortgages fall again, but experts hypothesize that this cannot happen until after the first half of 2024.
The general secretary of Fabi (Autonomous Federation of Italian Banks, Lando Maria Sileoni, states that the cut in interest rates is unlikely to take place during the first half of 2024 and that the decision to cut could arrive in the second half of the year, between July and December 2024.
Although in December 2023 the cost of loans, especially if requested at a fixed rate , has suffered a fairly slight decline, for those who have seen their mortgage installments increase dramatically, the marked drop will not arrive before the summer.
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