(Hong Kong) – HSBC’s Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp has seen new mortgage applications climb 28 percent in the first four months of 2002 pointing to improved sentiment returning to the market’s property sector.The Bank sees property prices remaining stable, supported by quite strong buying behaviour over recent residential property sales.
Much of this is apparently coming from first time home buyers, although residential prices remain some 50-60 percent below their crisis highs, primarily due to oversupply of stock. Domestic competition has seen mortgage interest rates drop by up to 2.5 percentage points below the prime rate of 5.125 percent in efforts to stimulate demand for debt.
Property sales rose in April by 30 percent over March and 7.7 percent from a year ago, according to figures from Hong Kong’s Land Registry.