HOUSING loans in Shanghai rebounded in January from December as the property market improved slightly but total bank lending grew slowly due to the government's tight monetary policies, official data showed.

New mortgages in the city hit 2.08 billion yuan (US$331 million) in January, an increase of 3.11 billion yuan from December but a drop of 4.14 billion yuan from January last year, the central bank's Shanghai branch said in a statement yesterday.

The mild rebound signaled a slow recovery in home transactions in the past few months.

The sales of new homes, excluding government-funded affordable housing, have risen slowly for three consecutive months from 457,300 square meters in October to 579,100 square meters in December, Uwin Real Estate Information Services Co data showed.

The central bank also said lending grew slowly in January in Shanghai. The new yuan loans totaled 26.8 billion yuan last month, down 4.4 billion from December's and 23.9 billion yuan less than that in January last year.

Nationwide, new yuan loans in China totaled 738.1 billion yuan in January, down 288.2 billion yuan from a year earlier.