Mortgage business doubles
Published:Sunday | November 24, 2013 | 12:00 AM
$11b new loans written in third quarter
Avia Collinder, Business Reporter
The Planning Institute of Jamaica in its third quarter review of the economy cites expansion in the volume and value of mortgages disbursed as among key factors that drove GDP growth.
The volume of mortgages is 72 per cent, while value climbed 69 per cent, the agency said Wednesday during its formal briefing.
Additional information supplied by the PIOJ to Sunday Business indicated that some $11.02 billion in new mortgages were written in the quarter. That compares to $6.5 billion for the same period in 2012.
The data relates to residential mortgages only. PIOJ also indicates that the figures do not capture all activity in the market.
The data includes National Housing Trust (NHT) and some building societies.
"We collected data from a selected sample of building societies and key mortgage providers," a PIOJ research officer explained on Wednesday.
The market also includes mortgage products sold by banks and credit unions, but the building societies command the lion's share of the private mortgage market.
The survey showed that mortgages climbed by a robust 69 per cent, within which the NHT reported growth of 23 per cent.
The implication, the research officer said, is that non-NHT lenders are generating business at a faster rate than the state agency, whose products are primarily targeted at the lower end of the market.
Speaking at Wednesday's briefing, James Stewart, who heads the Economic Planning and Research Division at the PIOJ, said the mortgage data "is used as an indicator to explain the performance of the construction industry, particularly as it relates to residential construction".
Construction GDP grew 2.5 per cent in the third quarter due to increased building construction activities in residential and non-residential projects.