House hunters in mainland China come off the sidelines as banks lower mortgage rates

Name: Door-to-door testing carried out in China’s Henan province as Omicron spreads from Tianjin
Uploaded: 2022-03-01T23:30:19.000Z
Duration: 1 min 35 s
Description: Door-to-door testing carried out in China’s Henan province as Omicron spreads from Tianjin

Home buyers who’ve been biding their time have been taking finally taking the plunge, tempted by big monthly savings

Average mortgage rates in 103 major cities stood at 5.47 per cent in February, 27 basis points down from a peak in September

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Average mortgage rates in 103 major cities stood at 5.47 per cent in February, 27 basis points down from a peak in September. Photo: Getty Images

Pearl Liu

Published: 7:30am, 2 Mar 2022

House hunters in China have been coming off the sidelines to take the plunge, tempted by big monthly savings as mortgage rates have dropped across the country.

Wang Ning and his wife finally decided to buy a 3 million yuan (US$480,000) two-bedroom home in Nanjing’s downtown when they found the total amount they needed to pay the bank for a 30-year loan had been cut by around 450,000 yuan from late last year.

“I have to get my home eventually, so why not get one when loans are cheaper and easier to get?” said Wang, a 31-year-old engineer in a technology company.

Wang said that when he started to look for a home last August the average rate for first-time buyers was 6.15 per cent. When he asked the banks earlier in February, it had dropped to 5.7 per cent.

“I can save around 1,000 yuan every month and get my loan in three weeks, much faster than my colleague who bought a year ago who waited for about 3 months,” Wang said. “It is not a bad deal.”

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Door-to-door testing carried out in China’s Henan province as Omicron spreads from Tianjin

Observers expect that more potential home buyers will flock into the housing market.