Economy

Macao house mortgages soar 6.2% in Q4 '09

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-03-16 11:11

MACAO - New residential mortgage loans (RMLs) approved by Macao banks in the fourth quarter of 2009 increased by 6.2 percent to 6.6 billion patacas ($835 million), according to the figures released Monday by the Monetary Authority of the Macao special administrative region (SAR).

The figures showed that new RMLs to residents grew 11.5 percent in terms of approved value whereas those to non-residents fell 17.0 percent. When compared with the same period last year, new approvals of RMLs surged 297.5 percent.

As at end-December 2009, the outstanding value of RMLs reached 44.2 billion patacas ($5.59 billion), an increase of 8.5 percent from three months earlier or 28.7 percent from a year ago, according to the Monetary Authority.

Meanwhile, new commercial real estate loans (CRELs) approved by local banks increased considerably by 88.0 percent from the previous quarter to 6.3 billion patacas ($797 million), of which 91.5 percent was granted to residents.

As for delinquency ratio, those for RMLs stood at 0.19 percent in the period, down 0.04 percentage points from three months earlier, while the ratio for CRELs also fell 0.10 percentage point from end-September 2009 to 0.23 percent.