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The following is issued on behalf of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority:
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced the results of the residential mortgage survey for February 2011.
New mortgage loans drawn down during February dropped by 15.9% to HK$18.3 billion compared with January.
New loans approved in February rose by 8.2% to HK$30.3 billion. Approvals for primary market transactions and secondary market transactions increased by HK$0.5 billion (26.5%) and HK$2.0 billion (9.9%) respectively, while those for refinancing transactions decreased by HK$0.2 billion or 4.5%. The number of new applications decreased by 10.2% to 17,478.
Around 7% of the new mortgage loans approved in February 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 decreased slightly to 92.0% from 92.2% in January.
The outstanding value of mortgage loans increased by 1.3% to HK$755.8 billion.
Both the mortgage delinquency ratio and rescheduled loan ratio remained unchanged at 0.01% and 0.04% respectively in February.
Ends/Friday, March 25, 2011
Issued at HKT 16:32
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