Frontier Statistics: Mortgage Interest Rate Distributions (December 2025)
Background
Interest rates on Principal-Dwelling Home (PDH) mortgage loans can vary widely between borrowers and lenders. These differences are not captured fully by the weighted averages published in official statistics. In order to provide greater insight into the Irish mortgage interest rate environment than is provided by official statistics alone, Central Bank of Ireland is publishing full PDH mortgage interest rate distributions for loans held by three institution types: banks, lending non-banks, and non-lending non-banks. Lending non-banks are non-bank institutions that originate their own mortgage lending, while non-lending non-banks are the non-bank institutions that hold residential mortgage loans, but do not originate mortgages themselves (i.e. they hold or service loans that were purchased from originating institutions).
Key Observations
- As of December 2025, lending non-banks had the highest median interest rate on mortgage loans at 3.65%, while non-lending non-banks had the lowest at 3.30%, a difference of 35 basis points.
- The median interest rates of the three institution types have converged considerably. The gap between the highest and lowest medians of the three institution types has decreased to 35 bps from a high of 290 basis points in December 2023, but increased from a low of 10 basis points in June 2025.
- Non-lending non-banks held a higher concentration of low-interest-rate loans and of high-interest-rate loans than banks and lending non-banks. Non-lending non-banks held the loans with the lowest median interest rate for the second consecutive quarter as of end-December 2025.
- The median interest rates on outstanding PDH mortgages for banks, lending non-banks, and non-lending non-banks were:
- Banks: 3.44% (-51 bps YoY)
- Lending non-banks: 3.65% (+15 bps YoY)
- Non-lending non-banks: 3.30% (-120 bps YoY)
- 86% of non-lending non-bank held mortgages had interest rates at or below 6% at end-December 2025, up from 74% a year earlier.
This Frontier Statistics release page is updated with new data periodically. This page was last updated on 13 March 2026 with data from Q4 2025. Historical data can be accessed in the data file at the end of this page.
Cumulative Distributions
Table 1: Cumulative Distribution by Institution Type, December 2025
| Interest Rate Bucket | Bank (%) | Lending non-bank (%) | Non-lending non-bank (%) |
|---|
| ≤ 0.5 | 1.01 | 0.38 | 14.82 |
|---|
| ≤ 1.0 | 1.02 | 0.38 | 15.06 |
|---|
| ≤ 1.5 | 1.02 | 0.38 | 15.65 |
|---|
| ≤ 2.0 | 1.70 | 7.40 | 16.24 |
|---|
| ≤ 2.5 | 10.69 | 11.72 | 18.86 |
|---|
| ≤ 3.0 | 25.04 | 21.66 | 35.29 |
|---|
| ≤ 3.5 | 54.56 | 44.97 | 57.28 |
|---|
| ≤ 4.0 | 73.68 | 66.20 | 65.14 |
|---|
| ≤ 4.5 | 91.99 | 90.29 | 70.33 |
|---|
| ≤ 5.0 | 99.52 | 99.31 | 76.98 |
|---|
| ≤ 5.5 | 99.87 | 99.76 | 81.41 |
|---|
| ≤ 6.0 | 99.91 | 99.98 | 86.28 |
|---|
| ≤ 6.5 | 99.94 | 99.99 | 93.43 |
|---|
| ≤ 7.0 | 99.96 | 99.99 | 97.56 |
|---|
| ≤ 7.5 | 99.96 | 99.99 | 98.36 |
|---|
| ≤ 8.0 | 99.96 | 99.99 | 98.82 |
|---|
| ≤ 8.5 | 99.96 | 100.00 | 99.58 |
|---|
| ≤ 9.0 | 99.98 | 100.00 | 99.86 |
|---|
| > 9.0 | 100.00 | 100.00 | 100.00 |
|---|
Source: Central Credit Register and author calculations.
Note: Table 1 compares the cumulative distributions of the interest rates on loans held by banks, lending non-banks, and non-lending non-banks as of December 2025.
Accessibility: Get the data in accessible format (XLSX 11.82KB)
Chart 1 compares the cumulative distributions of mortgage interest rates at end-December 2025 for banks and non-banks, which are further split into lending non-banks and non-lending non-banks. Each cumulative distribution shows the proportion of loans held by each institution type which have interest rates less than or equal to a given rate.
Intervals where the curves are steeper are interest rate ranges where loans are more highly concentrated.
Lending non-banks and banks hold mortgage loans with interest rates that follow similar distributions, while non-lending non-banks have a more distinct interest rate distribution. All three institution types hold a relatively high concentration of loans with interest rates between 2.5% and 3.5%, but above and below this range, the non-lending non-banks diverge, holding many loans with 0% interest rates (many of which are restructured loans) as well as a higher concentration of loans at high rates. For example, a non-lending non-bank held mortgage loan was more likely than a bank-held loan to have an interest rate under 3.5% but was also more likely to have an interest rate above 6%.
Chart 2 shows the shift over the previous year of each cumulative distribution. The largest shift was among non-lending non-bank held loans. At end-December 2025, 57% of PDH mortgage loans held by non-lending non-banks had interest rates at or below 3.5%, up from 21% of such loans a year prior. The shift in the distribution of interest rates on bank-held loans was smaller, with the shift concentrated in the 3.5% to 4.5% interest rate range. At end-December 2025, 54.6% of bank-held loans had interest rates at or below 3.5%, up from 37% at end-December 2024.
Mortgage Interest Rate Percentiles
Table 2: Mortgage Interest Rate Percentiles, December 2025
| Percentile | Bank (%) | Lending non-bank (%) | Non-lending non-bank (%) |
|---|
| 10 | 2.45 | 2.45 | 0.00 |
|---|
| 20 | 2.93 | 2.85 | 2.65 |
|---|
| 30 | 3.09 | 3.30 | 2.95 |
|---|
| 40 | 3.29 | 3.45 | 3.15 |
|---|
| 50 | 3.44 | 3.65 | 3.30 |
|---|
| 60 | 3.70 | 3.85 | 3.65 |
|---|
| 70 | 3.95 | 4.10 | 4.50 |
|---|
| 80 | 4.15 | 4.15 | 5.40 |
|---|
| 90 | 4.40 | 4.40 | 6.40 |
|---|
Source: Central Credit Register and author calculations.
Note: Table 2 presents the distribution of interest rates on PDH mortgages by decile, broken down by institution type.
Accessibility: Get the data in accessible format (XLSX 8.59KB)
Table 2 presents the interest rate distributions in terms of percentiles, which provides the ability to see the median interest rate on Irish mortgages across all three institution types.
As of December 2025, lending non-banks had the highest median interest rate on mortgage loans at 3.65%, while non-lending non-banks had the lowest at 3.3%, a gap of 35 basis points. The range of median interest rates among banks, lending non-banks, and non-lending non-banks has shrunk considerably from a peak of 290 basis points in December 2023. While interest rates across institution types have nearly converged at the median, this is not true of higher interest rate loans. For example, the 90th percentile interest rate on non-lending non-bank held mortgages was 6.4% at end-December, 200 basis points higher than the 90th percentile interest rate on mortgage loans held by banks and lending non-banks (4.4% each). Though this disparity has also decreased from its December 2023 peak of 363 basis points, it is still wider than the gap between institution types at the median.
Over the past year, interest rates held by all three mortgage-holding institution types have become more concentrated. For instance, the gap between a 90th percentile and 10th percentile interest rate on a bank-held mortgage at end Q4 2025 was 195 basis points, whereas one year prior that gap was 222 basis points. For lending non-banks, that gap fell from 255 to 195 basis points, while for non-lending non-banks, it narrowed from 770 to 640 basis points (chart 4).
Background
The Mortgage Interest Rate Distributions Frontier Statistics publication presents data on the distribution of Principal-Dwelling Home (PDH) mortgage loans broken down by the type of entity that holds the loans.
Mortgage interest rate distribution figures are compiled using data from the Central Credit Register (CCR), a database containing records of loans and loan applications of over €500 borrowed by Irish residents or governed by Irish law. The CCR is established by the Central Bank of Ireland under the Credit Reporting Act 2013 as amended. As such, lenders are required to submit information on loans to the CCR.
Coverage and Scope
The lenders included in this publication, and defined in the CCR, are regulated financial service providers (i.e. banks and credit unions). Irish-resident lenders and lenders in the EEA regulated by other agencies are included in the CCR. This publication also includes non-banks—non-regulated Irish-resident companies which are lenders or holders of mortgage loans. Data for all entity types in this publication comes from the CCR.
Data Checks and Revisions
As part of the Frontier Statistics series, the Mortgage Interest Rate Distributions publication will undergo continuous revisions each quarter, and the data and methodology are subject to change. CCR data are subject to change, and therefore analysis will be repeated each quarter to ensure the timeliest data is included.
Data quality checks have been carried out by comparing the data underlying the Mortgage Interest Rate Distributions publication with Central Bank of Ireland Official Statistics data sets, most notably the Mortgage Arrears data set.
Definitions
Bank: Licenced credit institutions as published on our Registers. In this publication, credit unions are considered banks.
Borrower: In this publication, borrowers are defined as the debtors on Principal-Dwelling Home (PDH) mortgage loans.
Central Credit Register (CCR): A database of loans of €500 or more borrowed by a person living in the Irish State at the time of applying for the loan, or borrowed via a loan agreement/application which is governed by Irish law. The CCR was set up in 2013 by the Central Bank of Ireland under the Credit Reporting Act 2013 (as amended). Lenders submit information on existing loans and loan applications to the CCR.
Cumulative distribution: The cumulative distribution of mortgage loans shows the proportion of loans less than or equal to a given interest rate.
Non-bank: Lenders or holders of mortgage loans which are not banks, credit unions, or government-sponsored entities. This category includes retail credit firms and credit servicing firms.
Lending non-bank: Lending non-banks are the subset of non-banks which originate PDH mortgage lending.
Non-lending non-bank: Non-lending non-banks are the subset of non-banks which hold PDH mortgage loans, but do not originate lending themselves.
Data
Publication Table 1 | xlsx 12 KB
Publication Table 2 | xlsx 9 KB
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