rate had actually dropped to 0.8% instead, below the strong 3% plus GDP annual growth rates during the 1997–2007 decade. During the third quarter of 2008 the national GDP contracted for the first time in 15 years. In February 2009, it was confirmed that Spain, along other European economies, had officially entered recession. In July 2009, the IMF worsened the estimates for Spain's 2009 contraction, to minus 4% of GDP for the year (close to the European average of minus 4.6%.) It estimated a further 0.8% contraction of the Spanish economy for 2010. In 2011, the deficit reached a high of 8.5%. For 2016 the deficit objective of the government was around 4%, falling to 2.9% for 2017. The European Commission has demanded 3.9% for 2016 and 2.5% for 2017. Property boom and bust, 2003–2014 The adoption of the Euro in 2002 had driven down long-term interest rates, prompting a surge in mortgage lending that jumped more than fourfold from 2000 to its 2010 apex. The growth in the Spanish property market, which had begun in 1997, accelerated and within a few years had developed into a property bubble, financed largely by regional banks, known as "Cajas", which are regional savings banks under the oversight of regional governments, and fed by the historically low interest rates and a massive growth of immigration. Fueling this trend, the Spanish economy was being credited for having avoided the virtual zero growth rate of some of its largest partners in the EU in the months previous to the global Great Recession. Over the five years ending 2005, Spain's economy had created more than half of all the new jobs in the European Union . At the top of its property boom, Spain was building more houses than Germany, France and the U.K. combined. Home prices soared by 71% between 2003 and 2008, in tandem with the credit explosion. The bubble imploded in 2008, causing the collapse of Spain's large property related and construction sectors, causing mass layoffs, and a collapsing domestic demand for goods and services. Unemployment shot up. At first, Spain's banks and financial services avoided the early crisis of their international counterparts. However, as the recession deepened and property prices slid, the growing bad debts of the smaller regional savings banks, the "cajas", forced the intervention of Spain's central bank and government through a stabilization and consolidation program, taking over or consolidating