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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 September 2010.
New mortgage loans drawn down during September rose by 2.4% to HK$33.9 billion compared with August.
New loans approved decreased by 21.6% to HK$31.6 billion. Approvals for primary market transactions and secondary market transactions dropped by HK$1.6 billion, or 41.9%, and HK$7.4 billion, or 25.9%, respectively, whereas those for refinancing transactions increased by HK$0.3 billion, or 4.3%. The average approved loan size decreased by 3.4% to HK$2.28 million and the average contractual life of the new loans approved also decreased to 273 months from 275 months in August. The average loan-to-value ratio of new loans approved declined to 58.6% from 61.4%. The number of new applications declined by 26.2% to 17,459.
Around 9% of the new mortgage loans approved in September were priced with reference to best lending rates. The majority of these loans were in the price range of 2% to less than 2.25%. The proportion of new mortgage loans priced with reference to HIBOR increased to 90.5% from 89.5% in August.
The outstanding value of mortgage loans grew by 1.7% to HK$718.7 billion.
Both the mortgage delinquency ratio and the rescheduled loan ratio were at a low of 0.02% and 0.04% respectively in September.
Ends/Monday, November 1, 2010
Issued at HKT 11:07
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