The 24 authorized institutions participating in the Monetary Authority's monthly survey of residential mortgage lending reported a 9.8 percent fall in new loans drawn down during January to 12.4 billion HK dollars (1.58 billion US dollars).

New loans approved by the institutions fell 2.4 percent to 14.8billion HK dollars, according to a government press release Thursday.

Within this total, approvals for primary market transactions rose 900 million HK dollars while approvals for secondary market transactions fell 900 million HK dollars and refinancing 400 million HK dollars.

The average contractual life of newly approved loans rose to 238 months, the longest since mid-1998.

The proportion of new approvals priced at more than 2.5 percent below the best lending rate rose to 90.1 percent from 87.2 percent in December last year, while that for fixed rate mortgages contracted further to 0.1 percent.

The outstanding amount of mortgage loans stood at 529 billion HK dollars, up 1 billion HK dollars over the previous month.

Source: Xinhua