China’s mortgages more affordable after rate cuts

Better offers: A man walks towards a residential area in Shanghai. Due to the lowered mortgage lending benchmark rates, housing loan rates for first-time homebuyers offered by several commercial banks in Shanghai have fallen below 5%. — Bloomberg

BEIJING: Mortgage interest rates in some major Chinese cities have seen adjustments following the latest benchmark lending rate cut, and industry experts believe the lowered cost of housing loans will further stimulate reasonable consumption demand for residential properties.

Personal home lending interest rates in the top-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, as well as Shenzhen and Guangzhou in Guangdong province, were all adjusted downward following the cut in the market-based benchmark lending rate by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the country’s central bank, last Thursday.