Huaxia Times reporter Feng Yingzi reports from Beijing
Recently, the news that small and medium-sized banks have cut deposit interest rates in a centralized manner, and several bank financing companies have lowered the benchmark of product performance, has led investors to lower the expected yield of idle funds.
As a result, "repayment in advance" has become a hot topic again. On April 25, the reporter of the Huaxia Times learned from several banks that compared with the early repayment tide in 2023, the current situation has eased, but the early repayment still needs an appointment, and the waiting time is at least one month.
The reporter found that at present, "repayment in advance" has become a way of financing for many people. Many borrowers reduce leverage costs by repaying loans. At the same time, some borrowers choose "debt replacement", using low interest rate consumer loans or business loans to replace high interest rate housing loans.
"The loan interest rate has dropped, but the deposit interest rate has dropped faster, and there is no better financing channel, so it is most appropriate to repay the loan in advance." On April 26, a borrower in Beijing told the Huaxia Times reporter.
"Repayment in advance" is hot again
"Every morning at 9:00 am, we open an appointment and log in on time. We haven't been able to get the quota for early repayment." On April 25, a Tianjin borrower, Ms. Zhang, told the Huaxia Times that he made an appointment for early repayment on the APP of a large state-owned bank, but he had already made an appointment before June 22, and has not yet got the number.
Ms. Zhang said that the house price had fallen, and she was at a high level in the previous few years, so early repayment has always been her goal.
At the same time, a borrower revealed to the reporter of the Huaxia Times that a joint-stock bank he had loaned was still unable to make online repayment at present, and an offline appointment was required for early repayment.
"Since March, we have applied for early repayment on the mobile phone APP, and it has always shown that 'this loan does not support self-service repayment', which was still the case in April." The above borrower said that after making a telephone consultation, we only know that at present, we can only make an appointment to make repayment offline at the branch where we have borrowed money on a business day, and the online appointment has not yet been restored.
Recently, borrowers in many places reported that the bank's prepayment business is still not smooth. In this regard, a bank staff member explained that for banks, housing loans are high-quality assets that can provide stable cash flow income for banks, with small risks and large profits. However, the bank did not intentionally set up obstacles to early repayment. The main reason was that the business volume was large, and the bank could not process all applications for early repayment in time, so an appointment was required.
"When handling the loan, the customer and the bank signed a loan contract. Prepayment is a contract change, and the bank needs to be approved at all levels," said the staff member.
At the end of August last year, after the issuance of the Notice on Matters Related to Lowering the Loan Interest Rate of the First House in Stock, the interest rate adjustment policies for the first house in stock were successively implemented, and since then the "early repayment tide" has eased.
According to the latest data from the regulatory authorities, by the end of 2023, the interest rate of more than 23 trillion yuan of outstanding housing loans across the country had been lowered by an average of 0.73 percentage points, benefiting more than 50 million families and 160 million people, and saving about 170 billion yuan of interest expenditure annually.
At the performance conference in early April, bank for economic construction Li Yun, Vice President, introduced that in the first three months of this year, the scale of prepayment of housing loans of China Construction Bank decreased compared with the fourth quarter of last year.
"Last year, the interest rate adjustment of the stock housing loan reduced the customer's housing loan expenditure, which to some extent helped reduce the customer's willingness to repay the housing loan in advance." Li Yun said.
A loan manager of a branch of China Construction Bank in Beijing told the Huaxia Times that at the beginning of last year, it would take about three months to make an appointment to repay the loan in advance. At present, it would take about one and a half months to make an appointment on mobile phones, and about one month to make an appointment at a branch. However, he also said that the queuing time of each outlet might be different.
However, some bank executives expressed a cautious attitude towards "early repayment". On March 29 this year, Minsheng Bank Lin Yunshan, Vice President, said at the performance conference that the scale of mortgage prepayment will increase in 2023, "the trend is still there since the beginning of this year".
Lin Yunshan said frankly, "We expect that the prepayment and repricing of mortgages in 2024 will affect the income of 1.8 billion yuan that year."
Li Yujia, the chief researcher of the Housing Policy Research Center of Guangdong Provincial Institute of Urban Planning, once mentioned that as long as the housing loan interest rate is higher than the financial interest rate, the housing price is still falling, and the residents expect the housing price to fall, the motivation for early repayment will always exist.
Li Yujia said that the residents are actively "reducing leverage" by "repaying the mortgage" in advance; Developers who do not take land also take the initiative to "reduce leverage". Real estate used to be the "accelerator" of finance, but now it has turned into a financial "reducer".
Consumer loan "replacement" housing loan trend is rising
The impact of "early repayment" has been reflected in the bank performance report.
Wind data shows that the mortgage loan balance of the six major state-owned banks totaled about 26.43 trillion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of about 516.6 billion yuan. This shows that under the background of stock housing loan adjustment and prepayment scale expansion, the bank's personal housing loan business is under overall pressure. It should be noted that the mortgage loans of the six major state-owned banks account for about 70% of all banks.
In addition, it is worth noting that in terms of bank personal loans, the most important personal housing loans have shrunk, but in contrast, consumer loans and business loans have become important growth poles.
According to the data released by the People's Bank of China, both operational loans and consumer loans show an upward trend in varying degrees, and the increase of household operational loans is faster. At the end of 2023, the year-on-year growth of operational loans is 17.2%.
The industry believes that the driving factors for the continuous growth of the total amount of personal loans of A-share listed banks mainly include: on the one hand, with the improvement of residents' income level, consumers' pursuit of high-quality life continues to increase, thus promoting the growth of demand for consumer loans.
On the other hand, financial institutions have launched more loan products that meet the market demand, such as unsecured loans, personal credit loans, etc., to meet the loan needs of different consumers.
At the same time, however, some people in the industry pointed out that the trend of replacing housing loans with consumer loans and business loans is gradually rising.
A Hangzhou borrower told the Huaxia Times that "a lot of people around me exchange consumer loans for housing loans." Last year, the lowest consumer loan was 3.4%. This year, he applied for a consumer loan quota with an interest rate of 2.98%, which is much lower than his own housing loan interest rate of more than 5%. It's exciting by comparison.
Since the beginning of this year, the interest rate of consumer loans has further declined, and activities such as "coupon grabbing, discount and group competition" have emerged in endlessly. The lowest interest rate after discount can reach 2.88%.
On the social platform, various strategies to increase the quota and reduce the consumption interest rate are emerging in endlessly. Many bloggers are keen to compare prices among banks and "pull wool" from consumer loans.
A Beijing borrower also introduced to the reporter of the Huaxia Times that his unit was on the white list of the bank, so he could apply for consumer loans with lower interest rates. Therefore, she chose the latter before "deposit commando" and "debt replacement".
"The original plan was to deposit in Hebei. In March, the three-year deposit interest rate was about 3.2%, but now it has dropped to below 3%. I missed the last bus and had to repay in advance." The above-mentioned Beijing borrower said that he could repay the house loan if he applied for a consumer loan of about 200000 yuan.
"No matter how small the mosquito is, it is also meat." A borrower from Dongguan said that at present, there is a 1.8% gap between the consumer loans he can borrow and the stock housing loans. Last year, he successfully replaced 100000 yuan of consumer loans with housing loans, and this year he chose to take another risk.
Zeng Gang, director of the Shanghai Finance and Development Laboratory, said: "The illegal entry of credit funds into the property market has always been an area of strict supervision by the financial management department. Once it is found that loans have been misappropriated to the real estate field, it will immediately withdraw the loans, reduce the credit line, and investigate the corresponding legal responsibilities. At the same time, it will also have an impact on the borrower's credit investigation."
In addition, a bank staff member also mentioned to the reporter of the Huaxia Times that the operation of short-term loans to replace long-term housing loans seems to "save money", but the risks are great. Most business loans and consumer loans contracts need to be renewed once every 1-3 years. If the bank withdraws loans, customers will face greater pressure on capital turnover.
At present, there are still many risks hidden behind the "loan for loan". In addition to easily causing individuals or families to face greater debt pressure in the short term, replacing housing loans with consumer loans is an illegal operation, and there are many legal hidden dangers behind it.
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