Mar 23 2013, 01:02 PM
QUOTE
Hong Kong Homes Face 20% Price Drop as Banks Raise Rates
By Stephanie Tong & Kelvin Wong - Mar 22, 2013 3:40 PM GMT+0700
Hong Kong officials, who have struggled in vain for three years to slow the growth in home prices, are about to get their wish as the city’s biggest banks raise mortgage rates.
Prices could fall as much as 20 percent over the next two years, according to Deutsche Bank AG, after lenders including HSBC Holdings Plc, Hong Kong’s biggest by assets, and Standard Chartered Plc raise their home loan rates by 25 basis points in response to tighter risk rules.
Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the U.S. currency has kept interest rates in the city at near record lows, underpinning a more than 110 percent gain in home prices since the beginning of 2009 to the most expensive among major global cities. Low mortgage costs, coupled with a property buying spree driven by Chinese from the mainland, have seen home prices shrug off repeated attempts by the government since 2010 to stymie escalating housing values amid an outcry over affordability.
“You have this pile of measures plus higher interest rates; this will be a big challenge for the market,” said Buggle Lau, chief analyst at Midland Holdings Ltd., the city’s biggest publicly traded realtor, which predicted as many as a third of real estate agent branches in Hong Kong will close.
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, who took over in July as head of the government, on Feb. 22 imposed his toughest yet price-curbing measures by doubling the stamp duty on all property transactions higher than HK$2 million ($257,700). The same day, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority told banks to maintain the risk weighting for new home loans at a minimum of 15 percent to help protect them against a drop in home values.
London-based HSBC was the first among Hong Kong’s lenders to lift rates from March 14. Its mortgages linked to the best lending rate climbed to a range of 2.85 percent to 3.15 percent, while at Standard Chartered, also headquartered in London, they are from 3.1 percent to 3.5 percent.
BOC Hong Kong Holdings Ltd. (2388), the city’s largest mortgage lender, increased its prime-linked mortgage rate to 2.4 percent to 3.05 percent, according to a March 20 statement. Hang Seng Bank Ltd. (11), controlled by HSBC, has raised its mortgage rates to 2.4 percent to 3 percent. Bank of East Asia Ltd. (23) upped its prime rate-linked mortgage terms to 2.9 percent to 3.4 percent. Major banks in Hong Kong last lifted mortgage rates in November 2011.
“Banks were mispricing their retail mortgage loans,” Sebastian Paredes, chief executive officer for Hong Kong at DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Southeast Asia’s largest bank, said in a March 8 interview. “Now with the new measures from HKMA, they will be forced to correct it.”
The rate increases may finally put a dent in prices, which have climbed 16 percent since Leung was sworn in on July 1, according to an index compiled by Centaline Property Agency Ltd.
“With the new government measures, the potential further rises in mortgage rates, and the expected increases in new supply in the medium term, we expect property prices to show larger corrections,” Tony Tsang and Jason Ching, analysts at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a March 13 report.
Since 2010, Hong Kong has imposed an extra tax of up to 20 percent of the value of homes on buyers who resell them within three years after purchasing, and raised the minimum down- payment requirement on mortgages for homes valued at more than HK$7 million. Leung, in October, imposed an extra 15 percent tax on all home purchases by companies and non-permanent residents, and promised to raise land supply for private development and to build more government housing.
While the impact on prices has yet to surface, the measures have reduced transactions. The average number of homes changing hands every month fell to 6,777 last year from 7,039 in 2011 and 11,315 in 2010.
Prices of both residential and commercial real estate have “come down” in the past two weeks and the property market is “stabilizing,” Chief Executive Leung said today at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment conference.
Total home transactions may fall below 3,000 in March and prices may drop as much as 10 percent this year, said Midland’s Lau. That would be the fewest monthly deals since 2003 when Hong Kong was nearing the end of a six-year property slump brought on by the Asian financial crisis, the burst of the dot.com bubble and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome epidemic.
By Stephanie Tong & Kelvin Wong - Mar 22, 2013 3:40 PM GMT+0700
Hong Kong officials, who have struggled in vain for three years to slow the growth in home prices, are about to get their wish as the city’s biggest banks raise mortgage rates.
Prices could fall as much as 20 percent over the next two years, according to Deutsche Bank AG, after lenders including HSBC Holdings Plc, Hong Kong’s biggest by assets, and Standard Chartered Plc raise their home loan rates by 25 basis points in response to tighter risk rules.
Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the U.S. currency has kept interest rates in the city at near record lows, underpinning a more than 110 percent gain in home prices since the beginning of 2009 to the most expensive among major global cities. Low mortgage costs, coupled with a property buying spree driven by Chinese from the mainland, have seen home prices shrug off repeated attempts by the government since 2010 to stymie escalating housing values amid an outcry over affordability.
“You have this pile of measures plus higher interest rates; this will be a big challenge for the market,” said Buggle Lau, chief analyst at Midland Holdings Ltd., the city’s biggest publicly traded realtor, which predicted as many as a third of real estate agent branches in Hong Kong will close.
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, who took over in July as head of the government, on Feb. 22 imposed his toughest yet price-curbing measures by doubling the stamp duty on all property transactions higher than HK$2 million ($257,700). The same day, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority told banks to maintain the risk weighting for new home loans at a minimum of 15 percent to help protect them against a drop in home values.
London-based HSBC was the first among Hong Kong’s lenders to lift rates from March 14. Its mortgages linked to the best lending rate climbed to a range of 2.85 percent to 3.15 percent, while at Standard Chartered, also headquartered in London, they are from 3.1 percent to 3.5 percent.
BOC Hong Kong Holdings Ltd. (2388), the city’s largest mortgage lender, increased its prime-linked mortgage rate to 2.4 percent to 3.05 percent, according to a March 20 statement. Hang Seng Bank Ltd. (11), controlled by HSBC, has raised its mortgage rates to 2.4 percent to 3 percent. Bank of East Asia Ltd. (23) upped its prime rate-linked mortgage terms to 2.9 percent to 3.4 percent. Major banks in Hong Kong last lifted mortgage rates in November 2011.
“Banks were mispricing their retail mortgage loans,” Sebastian Paredes, chief executive officer for Hong Kong at DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Southeast Asia’s largest bank, said in a March 8 interview. “Now with the new measures from HKMA, they will be forced to correct it.”
The rate increases may finally put a dent in prices, which have climbed 16 percent since Leung was sworn in on July 1, according to an index compiled by Centaline Property Agency Ltd.
“With the new government measures, the potential further rises in mortgage rates, and the expected increases in new supply in the medium term, we expect property prices to show larger corrections,” Tony Tsang and Jason Ching, analysts at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a March 13 report.
Since 2010, Hong Kong has imposed an extra tax of up to 20 percent of the value of homes on buyers who resell them within three years after purchasing, and raised the minimum down- payment requirement on mortgages for homes valued at more than HK$7 million. Leung, in October, imposed an extra 15 percent tax on all home purchases by companies and non-permanent residents, and promised to raise land supply for private development and to build more government housing.
While the impact on prices has yet to surface, the measures have reduced transactions. The average number of homes changing hands every month fell to 6,777 last year from 7,039 in 2011 and 11,315 in 2010.
Prices of both residential and commercial real estate have “come down” in the past two weeks and the property market is “stabilizing,” Chief Executive Leung said today at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment conference.
Total home transactions may fall below 3,000 in March and prices may drop as much as 10 percent this year, said Midland’s Lau. That would be the fewest monthly deals since 2003 when Hong Kong was nearing the end of a six-year property slump brought on by the Asian financial crisis, the burst of the dot.com bubble and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome epidemic.
This post has been edited by gark: Mar 23 2013, 01:05 PM
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Rental appreciation is more or less stagnant for the past few years, as there is current oversupply of properties seeking rental. My equity since then is not doing too shabby either, now switching slowly back to cash to prepare bullets for next opportunity. 
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