According to the 23 authorized institutions (AIs) which participate in the HKMA's monthly survey of residential mortgage lending, new mortgage loans drawn down during January 2010 declined by 11.8% to HK$17.3 billion compared with December 2009.
New loans approved grew by 22.3% to HK$29.6 billion. The growth was contributed by increases of HK$5.2 billion or 31.4% in approvals for secondary market transactions. Approvals for primary market transactions rose by HK$0.2 billion or 8.1% while approvals for refinancing loans remained stable. The number of new applications rose to 19,157 from 15,368 in December.
Up to 36% of the new mortgage loans approved were priced with reference to best lending rates in January, 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 HIBOR rose to 62.6% in January from 61.6% in December.
The outstanding value of mortgage loans increased by 0.7% to HK$645.3 billion.
The mortgage delinquency ratio and the rescheduled loan ratio were unchanged at 0.03% and 0.09% respectively in January.
For further enquiries, please contact:
Yokee Wong, Manager (Communications), at 2878 1213 or
Natalie Wu, Officer (Communications), at 2878 8246
Hong Kong Monetary Authority
25 February 2010