The international credit crisis has struck the Dutch mortgage market with one of the country's biggest foreign mortgage lenders stopping providing loans, Dutch paper the Financieele Dagblad reported Thursday.
U.S. mortgage company GMAC, which has a four percent market share for all new mortgages in the Netherlands in 2007, has told intermediaries that no more mortgages will be provided from March 11, the paper said.
But a company spokeswoman said the company's existing 50,000 Dutch borrowers will continue to be serviced as usual.
GMAC, which also operates under the brand Atlas, stormed the Dutch market several years ago by offering extremely low rates.
With the arrival of foreign suppliers in recent years, large Dutch banks have been forced to slash their rates. Market leader Rabobank, for instance, cut its rates in some cases by more than half.
Besides GMAC, Belgium's Argenta announced earlier that it was surrendering market share by offering less aggressive rates. Some analysts are worried that the disappearance of competitors may lead to higher mortgage rates in the Netherlands.
GMAC has fallen victim to the credit crisis because it sells all its mortgages on to investors. The crisis has caused the market for this so-called securitization to dry up and the company now has to finance the loans itself.
Source:Xinhua
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