Commercial banks in nearly 90 cities in China cut mortgage rates in February, according to a private research group as reported by Reuters. The move underscores a bid to boost sales and sentiment in the property market anchored by liquidity crunch in recent years.
Beike Research Institute in a report said, mortgage rates in 87 out of 103 cities surveyed by have come down, with 30 of them, including Beijing, leading with cuts of 5 basis points on average, in line with a similar decline in the five-year Loan Prime Rate (LPR) in January.
Earlier there were two rounds of cut in the benchmark LPR by the central bank in December and January, an attempt to boost economic growth.
“Mortgage rates in Beijing and Shanghai fell for the first time month-on-month since mid-2020,” said Xu Xiaole, an analyst at the Beike institute, adding that there was more room for cuts.
According to Reuters, China’s four biggest banks lowered mortgage rates in the southern city of Guangzhou by 20 basis points on Monday.
