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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 March 2010.
New mortgage loans drawn down during March rose by 60.3% to HK$27.4 billion compared with February.
New loans approved grew by 38.7% to HK$36.9 billion. The rise was broad-based. Approvals for primary market transactions increased by HK$2.6 billion or 165.6%, approvals for secondary market transactions increased by HK$2.6 billion or 12.8%, and approvals for refinancing loans increased by HK$5.1 billion or 106.4%. The number of new applications rose to 24,713 from 16,398 in February.
Around 23% of the new mortgage loans approved were priced with reference to best lending rates in March, 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 Hong Kong interbank offered rate (HIBOR) grew to 76.5% from 64.3% in February.
The outstanding value of mortgage loans increased by 1.2% to HK$658.3 billion.
The mortgage delinquency ratio remained at 0.03% while the rescheduled loan ratio edged down to 0.07% in March.
For further enquiries, please contact:
Yokee Wong, Manager (Communications), at 2878 1213 or
Natalie Wu, Officer (Communications), at 2878 8246
Ends/Monday, April 26, 2010
Issued at HKT 16:55
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