Residential Mortgage Survey Results for June 2004

According to the HKMA's monthly survey of residential mortgage lending, the level of activity in the residential mortgage loan market in June was similar to that in May.

New loans drawn down during June rose by 0.4% to HK$10.5 billion. New approvals also increased, by 1.4% in value terms to HK$11.8 billion and by 3.1% in number terms to 7,880 cases. A 38.9% increase in number of new approvals for primary market transactions more than offset a 6.1% reduction in secondary market transactions. The number of new applications increased by 8.0%.

The proportion of new approvals priced at more than 2.5% below the best lending rate declined to 62.6% from 65.7% in May while the proportion of fixed-rate mortgages increased to 14.4% from 10.7% in May.

The outstanding amount of mortgage loans declined by 0.1% to HK$524.2 billion.

The mortgage delinquency ratio improved further to a 5-year low of 0.57% from 0.63% in May. With the rescheduled loan ratio remaining unchanged at 0.49%, the combined ratio improved to 1.07%¹ from 1.12%.

For further enquiries, please contact:
Kevin Ip, Manager (Press), at 2878 1687 or
Thomas Chan, Senior Manager (Press), at 2878 1480

Hong Kong Monetary Authority
28 July 2004

1. Not the sum of the two ratios, due to rounding.

Annex

Notes to Annex