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The following is issued on behalf of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority:
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced today (January 28) the results of its latest survey on residential mortgage loans (RMLs) in negative equity*.
Surveyed authorized institutions did not report any RMLs in negative equity at end-December 2014**.
* The mortgage portfolio of the surveyed authorized institutions represents about 99% of the industry total. The survey results have been extrapolated to approximate the position of the banking sector as a whole.
** The figures derived from the survey relate only to RMLs provided by authorized institutions on the basis of first mortgages and which the reporting institution knows to be in negative equity (i.e. the outstanding loan amount with the reporting institution exceeds the current market value of the mortgaged property). Not included in these figures are some RMLs associated with co-financing schemes which would be in negative equity if the second mortgages were taken into account. The extent to which such RMLs are in negative equity is not known because authorized institutions do not maintain records on the outstanding balances of the second mortgages.
Ends/Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Issued at HKT 18:15
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