Mortgage Markets in Asia

Over the past several decades, mortgage markets have developed from a fairly primitive form to a rich and complex institution. Mortgage markets are no longer only a place in which borrowers meet lenders for the purpose of financing real estate transactions, but an arena in which innovative financial instruments exchange hands in huge masses on a daily basis, where banks are compelled to tightly manage the associated risk, where governments are often highly involved and use the ground for implementing and promoting their social and economic policies, etc. Moreover, frequently, the economic development of a local mortgage market is often a seismograph for the level of institutional development of the entire local economy. While the mortgage market in the United States has been studied extensively by academics and other researchers around the world, markets outside the U.S. generally gain much less attention. Particularly, the structure and other institutional aspects of the mortgage markets outside the U.S. attained a very limited focus. This paper thus intends to fill up this gap by highlighting various aspects of mortgage markets in Asia. The uniqueness of the chosen markets is they are in different stages of economic and financial development. This book will also examine questions relating to housing finance efficiency and contract heterogeneity. In addition, we will also examine the securitization experiences in these countries to provide lessons on how mortgage markets are integrated with capital markets and how particular institutional framework interacts with mortgage markets.