BRIEFS. economy

Mortgage decision praised by developers

The country's middle class workers will directly benefit from a law that will expand the threshold for preferential mortgage rates to $80,000.

This is the opinion of Mitsila Espino, director of the Consejo Nacional de Promotores de Vivienda (Convivienda).

Espino said that the middle class was “beginning to run out of options” in terms of affordable housing because the previous threshold for preferential rates was $62,500.

In 2007, Convivienda built and sold about 6,300 residences, 70 percent of which were priced under $62,500.

But Espino said very few new projects allowed buyers to qualify for that rate, since many prices started at $75,000.

“The new law appears to have address that problem,” Espino said.

Alexander Crisan, president of the Movimiento de Asalariados de Panama, had been seeking an extension of preferential mortgage rates up to $100,000.