“Hong Kong banks may have succeeded where the government failed as rising mortgage rates curb home price gains and cut sales to the lowest level in two years, signaling the property market may have peaked.
HSBC Holdings Plc (5), which controls two of the city’s three- biggest banks by customers, is among lenders that accelerated mortgage rate increases in April as liquidity dried up. An index of home prices has stalled since March 20, while the number of sales in April fell 37.6 percent from a year earlier to the lowest in more than two years, according to the Land Registry.
The government has come under pressure to cool the property market, the world’s priciest according to Savills Plc, which had surged as much as 70 percent since the beginning of 2009 on record-low mortgage rates, an influx of buyers from other Chinese cities, and a lack of supply. Its toughest measures in November, including releasing more land and higher deposit requirements, had failed to contain what theHong Kong Monetary Authority warned was a “credit-fueled property bubble.”
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