How does the bank make money when it's zero interest loan?
Serious question, the article didn't mention anything about it. I'm sure it still costs a few bucks in fees to get the loan but isn't the interest where the real profit is?
What makes money for the bank is the difference of interest rate between money they buy and money they sell. Whether one or both are negative or positive doesn't really matter. Relative difference is what matters.
In econ-101 it doesn't matter what the spread is, it isn't in itself rational to lend at 0%. That is taking on risk with no gain.
There must be some strange contortions in place to make this work. Whatever a "loan" is these days is going to be a totally regulatory construct with little connection to what they used to be way back when.
But they do not have to buy the same quantity of money as to what they are selling. When making a loan money is created out of thin air.
They do not have to hold deposits in the amount they lend out, but they do have to have the money. They have to hold back a fraction of the deposits.
If money was created out of thin air (in consumer banks), any loan with any interest rate (even negative one) would be highly profitable.
I am not talking about central banks.
The bonds have a 0% coupon but the value is now 96.725: https://www.nordea.dk/privat/produkter/boliglaan/Kurser-real...
So the buyer of the house (seller of the bonds) would have to sell 3.3% extra bonds. And the buyer of the bonds gets a discount.
As for why anyone would buy such bonds: The system is considered very stable (no US sub-prime mess) so if you have a lot of money, do not want to take risks (stocks and forex) and your bank charges you negative interest, it might make sense.
As for the house prices. Yes they are going up. But you still have to pay back the money in 20 years. Or remortgage, but then it might not be at 0%.
Another thing to consider is that property taxes are based on a public valuation that have some correlation with what you would be paying for a house (valuations is big mess now, but it will probably be fixed in less than 20 years).
Banks fund themselves using a variety of sources - bonds and money market instruments (of various types), equity, deposits, past profits (which is really the same as equity) and various central bank mechanisms. Of those the only ones where there is a decent chance of funding at negative rates are bonds/money markets and central banks.
Bank profits have been squeezed by negative rates precisely because they've been forced to pass on more of the rate reductions to borrowers than they've been able to recapture for themselves.