New mortgage loans down 30%

New mortgage loans drawn down during January dropped by 30.0 per cent to HK$21.7 billion compared with December last year. This is according to  Hong Kong Monetray Authority's residential mortgage survey for January 2011. 

The report added that new loans approved in January also declined by 3.2% to HK$28.0 billion. Approvals for primary market transactions and refinancing transactions decreased by HK$0.1 billion and HK$1.9 billion respectively, while those for secondary market transactions increased by HK$1.0 billion or 5.3 per cent. The number of new applications in January was 19,474. This is 35.1 per cent higher than the December figure, but 15.6 per cent lower than November 2010.

 Around 6 per cent of the new mortgage loans approved in January were priced with reference to best lending rates, with the largest portion in the price range of 2 per cent to less than 2.25 per cent. The proportion of new mortgage loans priced with reference to HIBOR increased to 92.2per cent from 90.0 per cent in December.

 The outstanding value of mortgage loans increased by 0.7 per cent to HK$745.8 billion. 

 Both the mortgage delinquency ratio and rescheduled loan ratio remained unchanged at 0.01 per cent and 0.04 per cent respectively in January.