Bulgaria's mortgage stock grows 25.2% while new housing-loan rates stay near 2.4%

Bulgaria's housing-credit engine is still running at a pace that matters for property demand. The Bulgarian National Bank reported EUR 19.328 billion of housing loans outstanding at the end of August 2026, 25.2% more than a year earlier. That rate is marginally below July's 25.7%, so the signal is rapid expansion rather than fresh acceleration.Financing also remains unusually cheap. The average interest rate on newly agreed housing loans slipped to 2.42% in August, while the annual percentage rate rose to 2.81%. The difference between those measures reflects fees and other borrowing costs that are not captured by the headline interest rate alone.For the property market, cheap credit can support purchasing power even when home prices are already elevated. It can also keep competition strong for well-located apartments and new-build stock. But credit growth of more than 25% should not be read as a guarantee of equivalent transaction or price growth. Loan balances can rise because of larger average mortgages, refinancing and accumulated lending as well as more sales.The useful investor signal is the combination: mortgage debt is still expanding very quickly, and the cost of new housing finance has not yet moved high enough to remove that support. The main risk is that affordability becomes increasingly dependent on continued low borrowing costs.