Shanghai banks raise rates for first-time homebuyers

Most commercial banks in Shanghai have raised interest rates on housing loans for first-time buyers in the past month, but China’s big five lenders in the municipality haven’t followed suit. Apart from the five big state-owned banks, most lenders in Shanghai have lowered their discounts on the central bank’s long-term benchmark lending rate from 10% to 5%. The rate currently is 4.9% for loans with a maturity of more than five years, a banker responsible for granting housing loans at a big lender in Shanghai told Caixin. A risk control manager at a commercial lender said that the recent rate increase is due to tightened market liquidity.  Increasing bond yields will drive up interest rates on housing mortgage loans, said Xu Xiaoqing, chief macroeconomist at DH Fund Management. The average interest rate for first-time homebuyers was 4.52% in April in cities around China, up from 4.49% from a year earlier.