The international credit crisis has finally hit the Dutch mortgage market with one of the country’s largest foreign mortgage lenders halting the issue of new mortgages as of today, reports the Financieele Dagblad on Thursday.

The US firm GMAC Rescap is in trouble because it has sold on or securitized its mortgage lending, so it now has to finance all existing mortgages itself.
Not officially a bank, GMAC has no reserves, nor can it use its Dutch mortgages as security at the European Central Bank to raise financing. New shares are not an option either because it is 49% owned by the troubled car maker General Motors.
Nonetheless, a GMAC spokeswoman told the newspaper that the company’s existing 50,000 Dutch borrowers will continue to be serviced as usual. The company has not disclosed how large its cash fund is, but the paper says it is estimated to be around €10bn.
Also operating under the brand Atlas, GMAC stormed onto the Dutch market in recent years, offering bargain rates to rapidly earn a 4% of market share for all new mortgages in 2007. In doing so it has also forced domestic lenders such as the country’s largest mortgage lender, Rabobank, to slash their own rates, in some cases by more than 50%.