According to the 24 authorized institutions (AIs) which participate in the HKMA's monthly survey of residential mortgage lending, new mortgage loans drawn down during January decreased by 9.8% to HK$12.4 billion.
New loans approved by the AIs during the month declined by 2.4% to HK$14.8 billion. Within this total, approvals for primary market transactions increased by HK$0.9 billion (37.5%) while approvals for secondary market transactions and refinancings declined by HK$0.9 billion (11.0%) and HK$0.4 billion (8.7%) respectively.
The average contractual life of newly approved loans increased to 238 months, the longest since mid-1998.
90.1% of the new loan approvals were priced at more than 2.5% below the best lending rate, up from 87.2% in December 2004. The proportion of approvals for fixed-rate mortgages contracted further to 0.1%.
The outstanding amount of mortgage loans stood at HK$529.0 billion, an increase of a little over HK$1 billion compared with the previous month.
The mortgage delinquency ratio improved further to 0.36% from 0.38% in December 2004. With the rescheduled loan ratio declining to 0.45% from 0.47%, the combined ratio improved to 0.81% from 0.85% in December 2004.
For further enquiries, please contact:
Jasmin Fung, Manager (Press), at 2878 8246 or
Thomas Chan, Senior Manager (Press), at 2878 1480
Hong Kong Monetary Authority
24 February 2005