Mortgage loans rise in May, residential hikes 69.2%

New mortgage loans approved in May this year rose exponentially compared month-on-month with April, a statistics release from the Monetary Authority of Macao (AMCM) has shown.

The same release shows new approvals of residential mortgage loans (RMLs) and commercial real estate loans (CRELs) both increased month-on-month in May with the first registering a hike of 69.2% to MOP2.63 billion.

Following the same trend, the number of new CRELs increased 59% month-on-month to MOP3.76 billion.

In the last three months of record (March to May) the monthly average of new RMLs approved reached MOP2.03 billion, an increase of 30% (in terms of value) when compared with the previous three-month period (February to April 2023).

Scoring an even higher increase was the monthly average of new CRELs approved, which between March and May 2023 was MOP2.88 billion. This amount represents an increase of 34.2% when compared with the previous period.

Most of the loans approved were related to residents of Macau which represented 99.1% of all RMLs and 90.8% of all CRELs approved.

Concerning outstanding balances at the end of May 2023, the outstanding value of RMLs dropped 0.6% month-on-month or 3.1% year-on-year to MOP233.9 billion. AMCM attributed this drop to the repayment of loans with large denominations.

When compared with the previous month, outstanding RMLs to residents and non-residents fell 0.5% and 2.3% respectively.

Concurrently, the outstanding value of CRELs was MOP161.6 billion, which remained virtually unchanged from the preceding month but rose 0.4% from a year ago.

When compared with the previous month, outstanding CRELs to residents remained unchanged whereas those to non-residents fell 0.7%.