New residential mortgage drawdowns down 16% to $18.3bn

Approvals for primary market transactions rose 26.5% and secondary market transactions 9.9% but the number of new applications fell 10.2%.

New residential mortgage loans drawn down during February fell 15.9% to $18.3 billion compared with January, while new loans approved rose 8.2% to $30.3 billion.

The Monetary Authority said on Friday approvals for primary market transactions and secondary market transactions rose by $500 million (+26.5%) and $2 billion (+9.9%) while those for refinancing transactions fell by $200 million or 4.5%. The number of new applications decreased 10.2% to 17,478.

About 7% of the new mortgage loans approved were priced with reference to best lending rates, with the largest portion in the price range of 2% to less than 2.25%.

The proportion of new mortgage loans priced with reference to HIBOR fell to 92% from 92.2%. The outstanding value of mortgage loans increased 1.3% to $755.8 billion, according to a Monetary Authority report.

Both the mortgage delinquency ratio and rescheduled loan ratio remained unchanged at 0.01% and 0.04%.