New mortgage loans drop 17% in October

New loans approved also fell to HK$12.5 billion.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said new mortgage loans drawn down during October decreased by 16.8% to HK$11.5 billion compared with September.

Meanwhile new loans approved in October fell by 14.6% to HK$12.5 billion compared with September. Among these, according to HKMA, approvals for primary market transactions decreased by 14.1% to HK$2.2 billion while approvals for secondary market transactions declined by 16.5% to HK$8.2 billion.

Approvals for refinancing dropped by 6.8% to HK$2 billion. The number of new applications in October fell by 28.3% compared with September to 6,613. HKMA said the figures reflect a continued decline in overall residential property transactions.

New mortgage loans priced with reference to best lending rates increased from 51.3% in September to 69.7% in October, with the largest portion priced in the range of 2.25% to less than 2.5%. New mortgage loans priced with reference to HIBOR decreased to 28.1% in October, mainly reflecting banks’ upward adjustments in the mortgage rate priced with reference to HIBOR.

The outstanding value of mortgage loans increased by 0.2% to HK$801.1 billion at end-October compared with end-September.

The mortgage delinquency ratio remained unchanged at 0.01% while the rescheduled loan ratio decreased to 0.02% in October, which has been the lowest level since September 2001 when the HKMA started to collect the information.