How the Positive Registry helps with real estate loans

Follow on Google News

How the Positive Registry helps those without proof of income to obtain mortgage loans

The real estate sector has the potential to boost any country's economy. In Brazil, the opportunities in this strategic market are even greater. Just consider the huge housing deficit - 7.75 million homes, according to the latest National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). At a time when economic growth is resuming, the increase in the buying and selling of real estate can make a major contribution to achieving consistent GDP results.

One of the problems, however, is the difficulty in obtaining real estate loans, which affects most Brazilians. This is because, as Dr. Daniele Akamine, a lawyer with a postgraduate degree in Construction Economics and a partner in the consultancy firm Akamine Negócios Imobiliários, wrote in a brilliant article, loans, especially in the case of real estate financing, rely heavily on the client's pay stub to calculate the interest on the money released.

Pay slips, as everyone knows, are typical of the formal market, of the employment relationship, which requires a signed work permit. This is not the reality that prevails in Brazil. The scenario, as all the indices show, is one of increasing informal work. There are already more than 37 million people working in a wide variety of jobs without a work permit. This figure is equivalent to 40% of the employed population. In a short time, following this pace of informal evolution, as Akamine observed, the expectation is that half of the economically active population will be involved in “non-traditional ways of proving income”.

As an alternative to the payslip, the lawyer suggested the adoption of the new Positive Register, which should be sanctioned by the President of the Republic. In her words, the change in legislation governing the CP is “the alternative format that comes closest to a solution for the new reality of work”. With the CP, which provides information on credit behavior, financial institutions - both public and private - will be able to evaluate the granting of credit to all those who are not in the formal market.

As all consumers will be included, according to the lawyer, “the good payer label will be enough to assess a person's ability to pay off a mortgage, as the companies with which the worker has dealings, such as banks, energy companies and telephone companies, will be able to validate their financial record” and also have a good assessment of their presumed income. As we wrote earlier, the payment history of the CP attests not only to the bills paid or owed in the past, but also to the monthly installments. Customers who have had their name blacklisted will also benefit, as they will be able to demonstrate that they have paid certain bills on time.

Therefore, in Akamine's view, which is shared by us at ANBC, the ability to pay attested to by the Positive Registry is of paramount importance for the plans to revive the real estate market. “There's no point in reducing interest rates if the new rates don't reach borrowers who only have this proof of a good payment profile,” she wrote.