Who is opening the door for business loans to enter the property market?
Xinhua News Agency, Shenzhen, March 23. Title: Who is opening the door for business loans to enter the property market?
Xinhua News Agency reporters Zhao Ruixi, Zheng Juntian, Ma Jian
Since 2020, the illegal inflow of operating loans into the property market has been on the rise.
In Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places, "cross-bridge financing, buy a house in full, take out business loans, and pay off bridge financing", some banks, fund intermediaries, and real estate intermediaries provide services that are "extensive."
As a financial product that supports the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, operating loans have existed for many years. Why has it been alienated in the past two years and has even become the driver of the overheating property market?
After the loan interest rate drops, it induces business loan irregularities
Li Yujia, chief researcher of the Guangdong Provincial Housing Policy Research Center, said in an interview with reporters that there are three reasons for these problems: first, the operating loan interest rate has fallen, which has been lower than the mortgage interest rate, which is obviously inverted; second, the loan period is elongated and there is a cycle. The phenomenon of exemption of funds crossing bridges such as lending, interest-before-capital, and renewal upon maturity; third, the loan limit has been increased, from 50% of the previous real estate appraisal value to 70% to 90%.
"Since last year, I have received information from three banks that can handle real estate mortgages. The annualized interest rate is about 3.8%, which is not only much lower than the second home loan interest rate, even lower than the first home loan interest rate, but also The loan amount is 70% of the total house price. I used to have only 40% to 50% of my own funds, which is not enough to pay the down payment for the second house, but only 30% of the down payment is required with the operating loan, which is equivalent to lowering the down payment." A business operator in Shanghai Said, "In this case, if I want to buy a second house, I will definitely use business loans, not house loans."
After interest rates fell, operating loans not only reduced financing costs, but were also used by violators to break the loan ratio restrictions in the loan restriction policy in disguise, weakening the effectiveness of property market regulation.
Many intermediaries preach to real estate speculators the "idea" of using business loans to buy houses and provide intermediary services for buying and selling enterprises.
In Shanghai, Shenzhen and other places, buyers can purchase a company established for more than one year through an intermediary for only a few thousand yuan. As long as the buyer is among the top three shareholders of the company and has real estate under their name, the real estate can be used as collateral For property, apply for business loan from the bank.
Ms. Wei, a real estate speculator in Shenzhen, in April 2020, under the instigation of an intermediary, she found a microfinance company to advance 4.63 million yuan to buy a house in a hot spot in Shenzhen with a total price of 7.28 million yuan.
She specially bought a company through an intermediary for more than 7,000 yuan, "the purpose is to engage in business loans, which also includes the cost of accounting for this company for one year."
However, that month, the illegal inflow of operating loans into the property market was exposed by the media. Subsequently, the bank tightened its lending policy, requiring that the property transfer six months before applying for operating loans.
The microfinance company's high interest rate of 24% per annum squeezed Ms. Wei's money and broke the chain of funds.
In the end, this house was auctioned off by the court in December 2020.
Operating loans flowed into the property market, increasing the "leverage" of real estate funds.
This behavior of "adding fuel to the fire" has contributed to the speculative atmosphere in the property market in some places.
Lots of problems detected
Since 2021, a "encirclement and suppression" campaign against illegal misappropriation of operating loans and real estate speculation has been launched in many hot cities.
Cities such as Beijing and Hangzhou have clearly stated that they will strictly prevent the inflow of operating loans into the property market. Cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen have stepped up investigations and punishments for embezzlement of operating loans.
According to data released by the Guangzhou Branch of the People’s Bank of China and the Guangdong Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau, after investigation, as of March 16, it was found that banking institutions within the jurisdiction of Guangdong (excluding Shenzhen) were suspected of illegally flowing into the real estate market with a problematic loan amount of 277 million yuan and 920 million yuan. Household.
The Shenzhen Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau and the People’s Bank of China Shenzhen Central Sub-branch notified the results of the special verification of operating loans on March 18: 21 loans with a value of 51.8 million yuan for suspected violations have been recovered ahead of time, 4 institutions that violated regulations were punished, and the persons responsible for violations were punished 14 The total amount of punishment was 5.75 million yuan.
The Shanghai Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau stated that 135 commercial banks in Shanghai have completed the special self-inspection of personal housing credit management, and there are violations of the use of loan funds, and some personal consumption loans and operating loan funds have flowed into the real estate market.
Among the violations that have been discovered, a considerable part of the loans have been boosted by real estate intermediaries, microfinance companies and other “packages”. The suspected violations include operating loan replacement through intermediary agencies to advance funds through bridges. Personal housing mortgage loans, misappropriation of personal business loans for the down payment for house purchases after many transfers.
Supervision still needs to work hard
At present, there are a large number of fund intermediaries in the market. They connect bank funds and conduct business through WeChat groups, housekeepers, self-media, small loan companies, wealth management companies, consulting companies, etc., most of which do not have a fixed office space.
The bank has not strictly reviewed the qualifications of the borrowers of operating loans and failed to thoroughly check the flow of loan funds. Li Yujia said that this has also condoned the irregularities of fund intermediaries and real estate intermediaries, allowing real estate speculators to easily obtain low-cost funds.
In fact, in addition to the illegal flow of business loans into the property market, there are many “traditional routines” in the lending process, such as increasing the loan limit by increasing the appraisal price of the house (highly rated and high loan), falsely issuing bank flow certificates, falsely issuing income certificates, Repairing bad credit records and other loan-related links can be done through an intermediary for a few thousand yuan.
Whether there is chaos in the loan link depends on whether the bank has the motivation to strengthen the review and whether it also wants to arbitrage in the property market.
Liu Mingyu, an associate professor at the School of Management of Fudan University, suggested that the allocation of financial resources should be guided by market-oriented means as much as possible to avoid the formation of arbitrage space for financial resources among financial groups at different levels.
At the same time strengthen supervision, once discovered, will never tolerate.