Easing home loans no help for slumping market

The central bank also eased a ban on mortgages for people without home loan debt who want to buy a third home, allowing banks to determine down payments and rates.

The central bank's move comes after all but five of the 46 cities that imposed home-purchase restrictions since 2010 eased or removed such limits in recent months.

Jinsong Du, Hong Kong-based property analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, wrote in a report that most people are not in a hurry to buy after analysts talked with industry experts, property sales agents, homebuyers and investors. As one person put it, "The better deal for mortgage is just announced, so it won't go away any time soon - I can afford to wait."

Du said that homeowners had already managed to circumvent the rules to qualify for loans to new buyers.

More than 80 percent of existing mortgages were for first purchases, even though in recent years such buyers made up only 35 percent of all home purchases.

Bank of China Ltd, the nation's fourth-largest lender, moved to expand lending prior to the central bank's announcement. On Sept 24, it allowed branches to adjust mortgage policies in line with local market conditions and "actively support residents' reasonable home-purchase demand," according to a company statement that didn't give details.

Cities such as Qingdao, Shandong province, and Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, also loosened mortgage rules starting in August. The moves haven't revived sales as bank credit remains tight.

Transactions rebounded shortly after the announcements in those cities before falling back to previous July and August levels, according to a Sept 16 report by China Real Estate Information Corp, a property consultancy and data provider that monitored 31 cities that reduced home-purchase restrictions.

Donald Yu, Shenzhen-based analyst at Guotai Junan Securities Co, said: "The wait-and-see sentiment is still prevalent among buyers. Developers still feel that the situation hasn't reversed, and it's still best to keep prices stable.

"They will still moderately lower prices, but not as steeply as before."

Smaller banks have trimmed their mortgage lending after seeing a rise in funding costs amid tight liquidity since mid-2013. Ping An Bank Co's home mortgage lending dropped by 1.3 percentage points in the first half of this year to 6.4 percent of its loan book, as the Shenzhen-based lender reduced such "low-risk, low-yield" loans, according to its semiannual report.

The average interest rate for personal loans, 66 percent of which are home mortgages, was 47 basis points lower than for corporate loans in the first half at Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd, the nation's biggest lender.

China eases home purchase restriction	Mortgage rule changes said to be in the pipeline