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The following is issued on behalf of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority:
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced the results of the residential mortgage survey for February 2010.
New mortgage loans drawn down during February declined by 1.5% to HK$17.1 billion compared with January.
New loans approved declined by 10.1% to HK$26.6 billion. The decline was contributed by decreases of HK$1.5 billion or 49.1% in approvals for primary market transactions and of HK$1.6 billion or 7.2% in approvals for secondary market transactions. By contrast, approvals for refinancing loans rose slightly. The number of new applications fell to 16,398 from 19,157 in January.
Around 34% of the new mortgage loans approved were priced with reference to best lending rates in February, 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 64.3% from 62.6% in January.
The outstanding value of mortgage loans increased by 0.8% to HK$650.7 billion.
The mortgage delinquency ratio was unchanged at 0.03% while the rescheduled loan ratio edged down to 0.08% in February.
For further enquiries, please contact:
Alice Lo, Communications Chief, at 2878 1480 or
Yokee Wong, Manager (Communications), at 2878 1213
Ends/Thursday, March 25, 2010
Issued at HKT 16:34
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