At the end of September, the People's Bank of China introduced policies to reduce the loan interest rate for the first home for two consecutive days, including lowering the loan interest rate of the first personal housing provident fund and gradually relaxing the lower limit of the first home loan interest rate in some cities.
Since the release of the above policy, since October, many places have issued documents to implement the policy.
The "Securities Daily" reporter recently interviewed banks and real estate agencies in many places and learned that the interest rate of commercial loans for the first home in many cities has dropped below 4%.
In addition, many cities have also lowered the loan interest rate of the first personal housing provident fund.
Guan Rongxue, a senior analyst at Zhuge Housing Data Research Center, told the "Securities Daily" reporter that the interest rate cut again this time sent a positive signal to the market. The reduction in mortgage interest rates means that the purchase cost of home buyers will be further reduced. At the same time, the further release of housing demand will It will help to increase the activity of the real estate market and help stabilize the confidence of buyers, local governments and other relevant entities in the expectations of the real estate market.
With the continuous deepening of "one city, one policy", eligible city governments can independently decide to maintain, lower or cancel the lower limit of the local first residential commercial personal housing loan interest rate, which may mean that the phenomenon of "interest rate reduction" in the fourth quarter will be increased accordingly.
Mortgage rates in many places
drop below 4%
Since the beginning of this year, the multiple reductions of LPR have driven the continuous decline in the interest rate of housing and commercial loans. The lower limit of the first-home loan interest rate in most cities has reached the standard of 4.1%.
On September 29, the People's Bank of China and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued a notice stating that for cities where the sales prices of newly built commercial residential buildings from June to August 2022 continued to drop month-on-month and year-on-year, before the end of 2022, the commercial properties of the first set of housing will be gradually relaxed. The lower limit of the personal housing loan interest rate, that is, allowing eligible cities to lower the first home loan interest rate again.
After the above-mentioned policies were released, the first-home commercial loan interest rates have been lowered in many places.
Recently, the reporter learned from personal loan officers of some banks in Tianjin and Shijiazhuang, as well as a number of real estate intermediaries, that starting from October 14, banks in Shijiazhuang, Tianjin and other places will follow up to reduce the first home loan interest rate.
Among them, many banks in Tianjin area have lowered the first-home loan interest rate from 4.1% to 3.9%, and many banks in Shijiazhuang area have lowered the first-home loan interest rate from 4.1% to 3.8%.
According to the reporter's incomplete statistics, as of now, the first-home loan interest rates in Jining in Shandong, Qingyuan and Yangjiang in Guangzhou, Guiyang in Guizhou, Wuhan in Hubei, Yichang and Xiangyang have broken the lower limit of 4.1%, and the lowest rate has dropped to 3.7%.
In addition to the cities that meet the requirements, most of the other cities that do not meet the interest rate reduction stage still implement the commercial mortgage interest rate of 4.1% for the first set and 4.9% for the second set.
First-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai enforce higher standards.
In addition to the reduction in the interest rate of the first home commercial loan, the interest rate of the first personal housing provident fund loan in many places has also been successively lowered.
On September 30, the People's Bank of China announced that starting from October 1, 2022, the loan interest rate of the first personal housing provident fund will be lowered by 0.15 percentage points.
According to the reporter's understanding, since October, many cities, including Beijing, have announced the implementation of the provident fund interest rate reduction policy announced by the People's Bank of China. After the adjustment, the interest rate of less than 5 years (including 5 years) and more than 5 years will be reduced by 15 percentage points. , fell to 2.6% and 3.1%, respectively.
Guan Rongxue believes that when the market is in a stage of steady repair, first- and second-tier cities with strong property market resilience mainly rely on their own adjustment mechanisms and less reliance on loose policies. Be cautious, and the mortgage policy may remain unchanged or slightly ease.
Of course, it cannot be ruled out that when the market repair process is blocked, other first- and second-tier cities will gradually relax their mortgage policies.
The real estate market is expected to accelerate in the fourth quarter
The People's Bank of China recently released a report on financial statistics for the first three quarters of 2022, showing that RMB loans increased by 18.08 trillion yuan in the first three quarters, a year-on-year increase of 1.36 trillion yuan.
By sector, household loans increased by 3.41 trillion yuan, of which short-term loans increased by 1.09 trillion yuan, and medium and long-term loans increased by 2.32 trillion yuan.
In Guan Rongxue's view, in September, resident medium and long-term loans increased by 345.6 billion yuan, a decrease of 121.1 billion yuan year-on-year, but the small increase rate continued to narrow.
It can be seen that under the further increase of policies such as interest rate cuts and the supply and demand ends of the real estate market, market confidence has been gradually restored and the demand for residential mortgage loans has been boosted.
Wang Qing, chief macro analyst at Oriental Jincheng, told reporters that the sharp decline in medium and long-term loans to residents in the first three quarters of this year was mainly due to the rapid decline in housing loans for new residents.
This is also the main reason why regulators have continued to guide the reduction of residential mortgage interest rates recently, which means that adjusting the mortgage interest rate is the key to affecting residents' medium and long-term loans and the trend of the property market.
According to incomplete statistics from the China Index Research Institute, since the beginning of this year, many provinces and cities across the country have relaxed real estate control policies in terms of reducing the down payment ratio, issuing housing subsidies, and increasing the amount of provident fund loans, and the demand-side policies have continued to make efforts.
Since the second half of the year, the pace of city-specific policies has accelerated, and in the third quarter alone, more than 300 property market policies have been introduced.
Under the favorable policies of multiple policies, the confidence of home buyers has recovered.
Recently, the People's Bank of China released a survey report on urban depositors in the third quarter of 2022, showing that 17.1% of residents plan to buy a house in the next three months, which is higher than the 16.9% in the second quarter.
Industry insiders believe that with the release of favorable property market policies and the gradual deepening of local city-specific policies, it is of great significance to boost the real estate market, which is conducive to promoting rigidity and improving the release of housing demand. The real estate market is expected to accelerate in the fourth quarter.
Wang Qing believes that even if the MLF interest rate remains unchanged in the fourth quarter, driven by the recent sharp reduction in bank deposit interest rates, the 5-year LPR quotation is likely to be reduced by 15 basis points to 30 basis points.
This will lead to a sharper reduction in mortgage interest rates across the country, including first- and second-tier cities.
In the later stage, depending on the operation of the property market, it is not ruled out that some cities may lower the lower limit of the mortgage interest rate for second home buyers.
(Securities Daily reporter Peng Yan)