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The following is issued on behalf of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority:
According to the 23 authorised institutions (AIs) which participate in the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's monthly survey of residential mortgage lending, new mortgage loans drawn down during January 2010 declined by 11.8% to HK$17.3 billion compared with December 2009.
New loans approved grew by 22.3% to HK$29.6 billion. The growth was contributed by increases of HK$5.2 billion or 31.4% in approvals for secondary market transactions. Approvals for primary market transactions rose by HK$0.2 billion or 8.1% while approvals for refinancing loans remained stable. The number of new applications rose to 19,157 from 15,368 in December.
Up to 36% of the new mortgage loans approved were priced with reference to best lending rates in January, the majority of which were in the price range of 2% to less than 2.25%. The proportion of new mortgage loans priced with reference to HIBOR rose to 62.6% in January from 61.6% in December.
The outstanding value of mortgage loans increased by 0.7% to HK$645.3 billion.
The mortgage delinquency ratio and the rescheduled loan ratio were unchanged at 0.03% and 0.09% respectively in January.
For further enquiries, please contact:
Yokee Wong, Manager (Communications), at 2878 1213 or
Natalie Wu, Officer (Communications), at 2878 8246
Ends/Thursday, February 25, 2010
Issued at HKT 16:33
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