• Korea Real Estate Review
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.75-88
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of the spread on housing mortgage loans. In particular, this study analyzes how the spread has a decisive effect on housing mortgage loans when a structural change occurs in the spread. For the sake of empirical analysis, this study utilizes the housing mortgage loan, housing mortgage loan interest rate, COFIX interest rate, and spread. The period of analysis is from December 2010 to December 2017. Results of the analysis show that there is a statistically significant structural change in the spread and housing mortgage loans (May and June 2015, respectively). It is estimated that the structural change in the spread has an influence on the structural change in housing mortgage loans. In addition, the effect of the spread on housing mortgage loans is larger than the effect of the COFIX interest rate and the housing mortgage loan interest rate. This indicates that the adjustment of the spread is a significant burden on housing mortgage loans. As economic uncertainties both internally and externally are increasing, pressure on interest rate hikes is also increasing. Considering these circumstances, interest rate hikes will be inevitable in the future. If the base interest rate and the spread increase simultaneously at Korea's current economic level, it will obviously lead to an economic recession as the burden on the repayment of principal and interest of housing mortgage loans will increase. Therefore, it is imperative that financial authorities prepare institutional arrangements in order to protect financial consumers by preventing arbitrary calculation of the spread, which would not be objective and would not be transparent from the banks.