Chinese January mortgage growth hits record high
Experts suggest figures reflect housing transactions in later months of 2016, when sales were still brisk
Despite a flurry of new curbing measures since the start of this year, China’s mortgage lending growth hit its highest level in January since at least 2007.
Outstanding household medium-to-long-term loans, the closest indicator of home mortgages, grew by 629.3 billion yuan in January, compared to 607.5 billion yuan a year ago, and is the highest single monthly growth since 2007, the earliest year such data can be traced back.
The data was part of a broader January new credit data released by People’s Bank of China on Tuesday night.
On the surface, the red-hot mortgage data defies a series of mortgage policy tightenings introduced this year, but analysts said the increase was mainly due to the lag effect, in which the January data reflected housing transactions in late months of 2016, when sales were still brisk.
“Many homebuyers had their loan approved by banks a few months ago, but didn’t actually obtain the loan until January,” said Chen Ji, a senior researcher at Bank of Communications.