Zeti denies that Bank Negara may impose more curbs on home loans
Posted on August 22, 2013 - Property News.
Investment analysts reassured by this statement although they are cautious about potential Budget 2014 announcements.
Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) will not introduce new measures to curb household debt as the current ones are sufficient and have produced the expected results, said Governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz (pic) yesterday. This was reported by Bernama after Zeti announced the country’s second quarter growth.
Recent reports cited industry sources expecting more measures aimed at “cooling” the property market, such as further tightening the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio for property purchases and the removal of the developer interest-bearing scheme (DIBS) in the fourth quarter or next year by Bank Negara.
“No, we have not introduced any such measures. We have already announced the measures much earlier and those are the ones in place and we have already seen that the household debt has moderated slightly.”
On July 5, BNM announced a set of measures aimed at curbing excessive household debts: a 10-year cap on the tenure for personal loans, a 35-year limit on both housing and non-residential property loans, as well as a prohibition on pre-approved personal financing products.
“We did not want to see a significant tightening that will cause an over-adjustment because we are depending on consumption activity which is sustainable and therefore, however, we did not want to see household indebtedness that was not sustainable that would, going forward, undermine our growth prospects,” Zeti said.
At this stage, BNM would continue to monitor closely the level of indebtedness and continue with its financial literacy awareness campaigns so that household financials were better managed, she said.
Kenanga investment research analysts commented that they are “positively reassured” by Bank Negara’s statement.
“This firms our theory that overly drastic measures on the sector may affect GDP growth, have a negative cascading effect on the banking system if asset values are affected and more importantly hinders the government’s ability to monetize their infrastructure projects (e.g. rail plus property for LRT and MRT) and their landbanks (e.g. TRX).”
Kenanga also mentioned concerns on the upcoming Budget 2014. “Potential measures include RPGT hikes which we opine is less detrimental to new launches (i.e. listed developers sales) vs. secondary market. Others include stamp duty hikes.
“Nonetheless we are likely to maintain ‘overweight’ on the sector because we believe there will be strong demand for new launches by virtue of better financing terms while many will try to hedge ahead of inflation caused by potential GST, subsidy rationalizations and implementation of Build-Then-Sell schemes. However, we qualify that this is caveat on no major changes in our House strategy.”
“We expect property stocks to rebound today from this reassuring news although we advice investors to be mindful of the Oct-2013 headwinds (UMNO elections and Budget 2014).
“However, if Budget 2014 property measures is not overly severe (e.g. seen in last 3 years), we can expect the sector to rally after a short knee-jerk/breather period.”