21.03.2019  Closing remarks Event on the “Impact of the new law on real estate credit”/PWC Margarita Delgado Deputy Governor  Good afternoon, I would like to thank PWC for kindly inviting me to speak at the close of today’s event on the new real estate credit law. I shall try to speak about the most innovative features of the new law from the supervisor’s standpoint, not dwelling too long on the details of the legal changes introduced, as I am sure that they have been widely discussed over the course of the morning. Specifically, I shall focus on the three features of the new law that strike me as particularly important from a supervisory viewpoint: (i) the emphasis given to customer protection, (ii) the need to ensure legal certainty for the mortgage market to function properly and (iii) the growing importance of credit conditions. I shall also refer to the potential short and mediumterm consequences of this law for access to owner-occupied housing, and shall conclude with some thoughts on how the new macroprudential tools may shape the way we supervise certain banking businesses, notably real estate lending. Introduction  As we know only too well, access to home ownership is an issue of great concern to Spanish society. Worldwide, Spain has traditionally been among the countries with the highest owner-occupancy rates. Although this rate has declined from the peak reached in 2002, it is still higher than in other European countries.
That is, that we know the range of outcomes that might happen and how the economy works and, insofar as is possible, given uncertainty, that we correctly analyse the available information to weight the probability of those. A famous corollary of this is the efficient markets hypothesis – that it is not possible to systematically ‘beat the market’. The stronger form of the hypothesis posits that market prices fully reflect all available information – that the price reflects the likely future revenue streams. But even if the price does deviate from that fundamental level, it may be rational for investors to remain in the market – as Chuck Prince famously put it, to keep dancing so long as the music is playing. The rewards of the game may be worth the risk of being stuck without a proverbial chair at the end. And even if they are not, sitting on the sidelines may not be a winning career move if promotions and funding flow to those with a reputation for high returns. It may be rational to stay with the herd, as Keynes said “it is better for reputation to fail conventionally”.11 Rational expectations do not mean that the future matches expectations and corrections are avoided – when new information arises, agents react to that. If the information is material for a financial asset, for example a change in Roman property ownership laws in AD 33, the adjustment can be large.