Zuzana Gric, Simona Malovaná, Dominika Ehrenbergerová
Borrower-based mortgage limits are designed to make lending safer, but they may not affect all households in the same way. We study how tighter loan-to-value and debt-service-to-income limits are associated with access to new mortgages across the income distribution. We combine household-level data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey with hand-collected information on policy actions in 17 European countries over 2008–2019. We find that middle-income households are disproportionately affected. Following tightening, they are approximately 2 percentage points less likely than households in the top income decile to obtain a first mortgage on their main residence. The pattern is driven mainly by loan-to-value tightening. Among middle-income households, the differential effect is stronger for younger households, which typically have less accumulated savings and housing equity.
JEL Codes: E58, D31, G21, G28
Keywords: Borrower-based measures, distributional effects, household borrowing, macroprudential policy, household finance, and consumption survey
Issued: July 2026
Download: CNB WP No. 10/2026 (pdf, 1.4 MB)