Irish Banks Face Consumers Who Don’t Want Their Biggest Product
- Mortgage growth stalls as more consumers buy homes with cash
- Bank of Ireland, AIB make most of their revenue from interest
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Ireland’s banks are facing an unusual problem: hardly anyone seems to want a mortgage from them.
Allied Irish Banks Plc said home loans were the slowest growing part of its Irish lending in the first half, while Bank of Ireland issued more than double the amount of new mortgages in the U.K. than in its home market. About 60 percent of homes in Ireland are being bought without a mortgage in recent years, up from 25 percent a decade ago, the central bank said in July, indicating a sharper drop in the market for home loans than analysts expected.