Resident home loans down 26.1 percent

According to statistics released by the Monetary Authority of Macau (AMCM) today, new approvals of residential mortgage loans (RMLs) decreased by approximately 26 percent in February this year, when compared to the previous month.

There was a decrease (26.1 percent) in the RMLs attributed to Macau residents, which accounts for 96.3 percent of the total, dropping to MOP2.5 billion.

Those attributed to non-residents  also decreased by 15.3 percent to MOP96.7 million.
Still, the figures released by AMCM show an increase of 14.9 percent on the total number of RMLs approved when compared year-on-year with the same period of 2016.

The new RMLs, collateralized by uncompleted units, also decreased significantly when compared year-on-year, registering a drop of 75 percent; although, figures also show an increase of 6.9 percent when compared with the previous month this year.

On the other hand, the loans conceded to commercial real estate projects (CRELs) increased in February 2017, registering a jump of six percent month-to-month to MOP2.8 billion and a slightly lower annual growth of 5.3 percent.

The growth registered by AMCM was mostly due to the loans granted to non-residents since the commercial loans taken by residents only registered a growth of 1.6 percent.

With regards to the delinquency ratios, RMLs registered a ratio of 0.19 percent, virtually unchanged from a month ago and only up by 0.09 percent from a year earlier.

The ratio for CRELs followed a similar tendency, registering 0.13 percent, unchanged from the preceding month and slightly up by 0.11 percent from the end of February 2016.  RM