Housing still mired in the basement

New mortgage loans approved in January fell 32% to $6.1 billion compared with December.

According to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, new loans approved during the month dropped 3.8% to $10 billion. The number of new applications was down by 5% to 5,745.

The outstanding value of mortgage loans decreased 0.2% to $799.8 billion. The mortgage delinquency ratio and rescheduled loan ratio, however, remained unchanged at 0.01% and 0.02%.

On the other hand, approvals for primary market transactions grew 7.6% to $3 billion while approvals for secondary market transactions fell 7.6% to $5.7 billion. Approvals for refinancing fell 9.8% to $1.3 billion.

New mortgage loans priced with reference to best lending rates increased from 89.8% in December to 93.6% in January with the majority priced within the range of 2.25% and 2.5%. New mortgage loans priced with reference to HIBOR fell to 2.9%.