Shanghai Opens First Housing Loan Center

SHANGHAI, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai, China's leading commercial city, opened its first residential loan service center for individual home buyers on Wednesday in a bid to accelerate development of the housing market.

This indicates that Shanghai's housing credit market will embark on a specialized, legal path of development, said Zhang Enzhao, head of the Shanghai Branch of the Construction Bank of China (CBC).

The center, to be attached to the CBC Shanghai Branch, has already hired a large number of professionals in the fields of banking, law, finance, management, and computer science who will explain to potential borrowers state laws on loans for residential housing, provide consultations, and handle notarization and insurance procedures.

As the first bank in China to offer loans for individual home buyers, CBC has so far issued 22 billion yuan in loans to residents of Shanghai. The value of loans issued in the first half of this year increased by 5.18 billion yuan, or 51 percent, over the figure for the same period last year.