Cover News Reporter Yao Ruipeng
Since the implementation of the "517 New Deal", the real estate market has ushered in a new round of changes, and the interest rate of new mortgages has reached a low level in recent years, but the interest rate of stock housing in many places still remains above 4%. Many owners choose to repay in advance, Wang Lintian, who received a payment of 600,000 yuan on July 5, made an appointment with a bank in Chengdu for early repayment, but was told to queue for nearly 4 months, and a new wave of prepayment is coming?
The most concerned thing for home buyers like Wang Lintian is the adjustment of policies related to stock housing loans. Industry insiders said that the current interest rate on existing housing loans is historically low, and it is difficult to adjust it in the short term. The Chengdu Provident Fund Center replied to the reporter that we have been monitoring liquidity risks, and the current Chengdu Provident Fund Center is showing an increasing trend in the amount of withdrawals and loans, and under the premise of ensuring normal provident fund withdrawals and loan needs, it does not have the conditions to carry out "business-to-public loans" for the time being.
The interest rate of the existing mortgage is more than 4%.
The owner has no choice but to repay the loan early?
Nearly 50 days since the implementation of the "517 New Deal", the interest rate of new mortgages across the country has been lowered to the lowest level in recent years, and the interest rate of new mortgages in most cities has not been affected by LPR quotations, and the interest rate on the first home has dropped to about 3.5%, that is, LPR minus 45 basis points. The minimum commercial loan for the first home buyer in Chengdu is 3.35%. At present, the interest rate of the existing mortgage is mostly maintained at more than 4%, and the gap between the incremental mortgage interest rate and the existing mortgage interest rate is further widened.
Source: Beike Research Institute
When Wang Lintian, who has lived in Chengdu for many years, applied for his first mortgage loan in 2022, the mainstream banks in Chengdu implemented the plan of increasing the benchmark interest rate, and the interest rate at that time was 5.125%, and based on the loan amount of nearly 1.7 million, Wang Lintian's monthly payment was close to 10,000 yuan. At present, Wang Lintian's loan interest rate is changed to LPR, which is repriced in January every year. The mortgage interest rate has dropped from 5.125% to 4.2%, and the monthly payment has dropped from 10,000 to about 8,000. However, compared with the minimum commercial loan of 3.35% in Chengdu, it is still a lot higher, and the down payment has dropped to 1.5%, which also makes Wang Lintian "mutter" in his heart.
Not only in Chengdu, according to the monitoring of the Shell Research Institute, the first set of interest rates in Shanghai and Shenzhen have dropped to 3.50%, and the first two sets of interest rates in Guangzhou have been reduced to 3.40% and 3.80%, making it the most convenient credit city among the first-tier cities. Hefei, Zhuhai, Foshan and other cities will implement the same interest rate for the first and second sets. The spread between the first two sets of interest rates in Hangzhou, Zhengzhou, Wuhan and other cities narrowed to 10BP. Among the 100 cities, the lowest interest rate for the first set is 3.0% in Zhuzhou, and the lowest interest rate for the second set is 3.15% in Foshan.
In the face of the continuously declining interest rate, Wang Lintian said that it has little to do with him, as a stock owner, the mortgage needs to wait until next year to follow the LPR downward adjustment, and no matter how it is adjusted, it is higher than the interest rate of the new mortgage. In this regard, Wang Lintian, who is in the clothing customization industry, immediately made an appointment with the bank for early repayment after receiving the mid-year project settlement in July, but encountered new difficulties.
Need to queue for nearly 4 months for prepayment?
Bank: A large number of repayers does not guarantee the success of the appointment
Wang Lintian, who received nearly 600,000 yuan in the settlement of the project, discussed with his wife that he was going to change to a car, and when he was ready to see the car, the community across the street from Wang Lintian's residential community was liquidated for 13,000 yuan, while Wang Lintian bought a house two years ago when it was more than 20,000 yuan per square meter. After thinking about it, the two prepared to repay the loan early to mitigate the risk.
However, when making an appointment with the lending bank, he was told that he needed to queue up, and the queue time might be long, and he hoped that Wang Lintian would wait patiently. Faced with a vague schedule, Wang Lintian inquired through a friend who worked in a bank, but was told that it might be more than four months. At present, Wang Lintian can only make an appointment on the mobile APP, and the time displayed will not be processed until September. Whether the repayment can be successfully handled, Wang Lintian is currently unknown.
The appointment for prepayment time on a bank app can only be made after 2 months
In this case, the reporter called a number of mainstream banks in Chengdu, and the answer was that the current number of repayments is large, and related businesses need to queue up, and the queuing time varies from bank to bank, ranging from 1 month to 3 to 4 months. Bank workers said that the middle and end of the year are crowded times for repayment, and there is no guarantee that the appointment will be successful in a short time. "Personal housing loans are the most high-quality assets, and the risk of stable income is very small. The large amount of prepayment in the short term will certainly affect the long-term spread income of banks. An employee working in the credit department of a large bank in Chengdu said that the bank does not necessarily accept the loan in order, and will treat the repayment amount in stages.
According to the statistics of the central bank, since the beginning of this year, residents' medium and long-term loans have contracted across the board, and by May, they had increased slightly year-on-year for four consecutive months, and the scale of new medium and long-term loans in April and February was negative, and hit the lowest and second lowest values on record. Since 2020, the wave of prepayment has been emerging, but can the interest rate of the existing housing loan be lowered, and can the pure commercial loan be converted into a provident fund loan?
Will the policies related to existing housing loans be adjusted?
The reporter flipped through a number of social networking sites, and there was a lot of discussion on whether the relevant policies of the stock housing loan could be adjusted, and the focus was that the interest rate of the stock housing loan was lowered to the extent that it did not meet expectations, and the interest rate of the second set of loans in many cities was lower than the interest rate of the first set of loans for the stock of housing.
Regarding the current relevant situation, the reporter called the People's Bank of China and received a reply that the relevant policies need to be studied and judged time, and the adjustment of the interest rate of the existing housing loan is subject to the current policy. Liu Lu, a professor at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, said that at present, the spread between bank deposits and loans has fallen to the lowest in history, and it is difficult to fall again in the short term when the bank profit assessment is strengthened and the stock of housing loans has fallen in a wave last year.
The reporter consulted the Chengdu Provident Fund Center and got a reply: we have been monitoring liquidity risk, and the current Chengdu Provident Fund Center is growing in terms of withdrawal and loan demand, taking into account the actual situation of the real estate market in Chengdu and the large stock of commercial loans, etc., under the premise of ensuring normal provident fund withdrawal and loan demand, the center does not have the conditions to carry out "business-to-public loans".
Landlords like Wang Lintian are looking forward to the adjustment of policies related to stock housing, and such discussions are not limited to home buyers, and economists Meng Xiaosu and Ren Zeping have also called for measures to guide banks to moderately reduce the interest rate of existing housing loans. "There is still room for deepening the policy of reducing the interest rate of existing housing loans in the next step, but the relevant departments need time to study and judge." Yang Haiping, a researcher at the Securities Research Institute of the Central University of Finance and Economics, said.