Property stocks in Hong Kong rally on mortgage stimulus

Chinese property stocks rallied on Tuesday after top financial regulators vowed a range of monetary easing measures to provide some relief for millions of families and boost a recovery in the real estate market.

During a high-level press conference Tuesday morning, People’s Bank of China Gov. Pan Gongsheng announced that Beijing would reduce the interest rates on existing individual mortgages by an average of 0.5 percentage points, and the lower down-payment ratio for second homes purchases to 15% from 25%.

It’s the first time that down payment levels for first and second homes are unified, and the lower rate is expected by the PBOC to reduce household interest payments on mortgages by an average of 150 billion yuan a year ($21.25 billion).

Hang Seng Mainland Properties Index surged as much as 5% when Hong Kong markets opened shortly after the announcement was made.

Hong Kong-listed shares of real estate developers like China Resources Land, Longfor Group Holdings and China Overseas Land & Investment were some of the biggest movers on the Hang Seng index, gaining as much as 4.49%, 4.57% and 5.41%, respectively.

Chinese policymakers have been ramping up support to reduce household’s financial burden and shore up the troubled real estate sector.

Previous measures have done little to spur a meaningful recovery, with property-related investment falling more than 10% in the first eight months this year, from a year ago.

The central bank will also offer guidance for commercial banks to improve pricing mechanisms for mortgage loans, Pan said at the briefing, where he also announced that that China will cut the amount of cash banks need to have in hand, known as the reserve requirement ratio or RRR, by 50 basis points.

The impacts from the new measures are likely to be limited as “rate cuts on existing loans would not spur demands for new homes, and might slow down PBOC’s pace of further lowering the loan prime rates,” William Wu, an analyst at Daiwa Capital Markets, said in an email, according to CNBC’s translation of the Chinese.

Bruce Pang, chief economist and head of research for Greater China at JLL, an investment management firm, predicted that the housing market will still take time to bottom out.

“It is necessary and urgent to launch supportive measures on all fronts and ASAP,” Pang said, but authorities will also need to provide “effective and efficient support to developers to boost property investment and construction activities.”

Bloomberg reported last month, citing people familiar with the matter, that China was mulling a plan to allow homeowners to renegotiate terms with their current lenders before January next year. Homeowners could also be allowed to refinance with a different bank for the first time in years, the outlet reported.