Tight property loans restrain China's housing market

BEIJING - Sluggish home sales, increasing market supply and declining property prices epitomize China's cooling real estate market. And there are worries that the decline may continue as banks become reluctant on mortgage lending.

In East China's Nanjing, for example, a postgraduate surnamed Li is interested in buying a four-bedroom apartment. Li is able to pay a 70-percent down payment, but still needs to apply for bank loans to complete the payment. So far, the application remains unapproved.

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The case is not unusual, prompting the central bank to act last month, by urging the country's commercial banks to be quicker in approving and issuing loans to eligible home buyers, mainly first-time home buyers.

However, banks in different cities were not consistent in responding to the call. Chen Kaihe, an estate advisor at 5i5j.com, a leading Chinese real estate agent, said that most banks have accelerated their speed in granting loans, though the China Construction Bank in Shanghai was slower.

Most mortgage loans for first-time home buyers in Shanghai are charged at the benchmark rate, but in the adjacent city of Wuxi, certain banks are charging 10 percent more than the benchmark rate.

In China's smaller third and fourth-tier cities, the mortgage lending market has long been both bizarre and secretive, as home buyers may be coerced to accept financial products offered by the banks, such as wealth management and insurance, before they are offered mortgage loans.

Meanwhile, cash-strapped property developers in small cities have also been asked to fulfill requirements raised by the banks such as making deposits on fixed dates. Failing to do so may lead to down payment rises and lending delays, which will further slow developers from receiving sales money, according to Xu Jin, a credit lending expert at rong360.com, a financing information website.