Mexico Sets First Fixed-Rate Mortgages Ben Bain and Jonathan J. Levin - Bloomberg News
go to original April 24, 2012

Mexico's largest mortgage provider plans to offer home buyers fixed-rate loans for the first time, as the two-decade long inflationary hangover from the country's Tequila Crisis fades.

A legal overhaul will let Mexicans who finance their homes with state-controlled Infonavit, the company founded in 1972 to give workers access to home financing, get the 30-year mortgages for the first time as soon as June. The lender, which has made about 4.4 million loans since 2001, also plans to issue mortgage-backed securities in pesos next year to match income with obligations, the first such sales since 2004.

President Felipe Calderon's government is taking advantage of the second-lowest inflation rate among major Latin American economies to start providing the loans as it moves to tame a housing shortage afflicting 8.9 million families. Inflation has declined to 3.73 percent from 52 percent in 1995 when the peso's devaluation sparked capital outflows across the region.

It's "a much more mature country" than during the "disaster" of The Tequila Crisis, said Alan Boyce, chief executive officer of Absalon Project, which is partially backed by billionaire financier George Soros to promote the Danish mortgage model globally, including Mexico. The peso's devaluation in December 1994 led to investors pulling money from countries throughout Latin America, an event that came to be known as the Tequila Crisis because of its origin in Mexico.

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!