The value of new residential mortgage loans approved by authorised institutions in October grew 25% to $15.7 billion.

Approvals for transactions in the primary market rose 45.5% or $1.2 billion, while those for the secondary market rose 28.7% or $1.9 billion.

New loans drawn down rose 8.4% to $12.3 billion. The number of new loan applications rose for the third straight month, by 9.9%.

The proportion of new loan approvals priced at more than 2.5% below the best lending rate grew to 86.2% from 73.7% in September, while those for fixed rate mortgages contracted to 2.2% from 10.2% in September.

The outstanding amount of mortgage loans rose to $525 billion. 

The mortgage delinquency ratio improved further to 0.43% from 0.47% in September.  With the rescheduled loan ratio remaining at 0.50%, the combined ratio improved to 0.93% from 0.97%.