As China’s mortgage boycott revolt spreads, senior banking regulator assures steps to solve crisis
- The mortgage boycott crisis in China has spread to 319 projects from around 100 a week ago
- Senior banking regulator says banks will provide loans to developers to complete delayed residential projects
China’s banking watchdog has officially assured the public that loans will be provided to qualified developers to help complete unfinished residential projects, as the mortgage boycott crisis continues to spread across the country.
Banks will meet developers’ financing needs where it is reasonable, Liu Zhongrui, a senior official from the statistics and risk assessment department of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), said at a press conference on Thursday, the first official remark about the unfinished flats that led to homeowners suspending mortgage payments.
“All the difficulties and problems will be properly solved,” Liu said. The CBIRC is paying high attention to home delivery delays of a project in Jingdezhen, in southern Jiangxi province, he added without mentioning the growing mortgage boycott across the country over the past couple of days.
Homebuyers of 319 projects have made public letters they sent to banks to tell them that they would no longer be paying their mortgages as of July 21, according to files posted to Microsoft’s collaborative code-sharing platform GitHub, which is commonly used to avoid censorship in China. A week ago around 100 projects were affected.
“Banks must work with local authorities to provide sufficient financial liquidity to facilitate the completion and handover of contracted property sales, based on market principles and compliance with the law,” Liu said on Sunday in comments similar to an article published in the China Banking and Insurance News, a CBIRC publication.