ABN Amro freezes new property finance in Germany

FRANKFURT, April 10 (Reuters) - ABN Amro Hypotheken Gruppe will freeze its new residential property financing business on April 22 in Germany because of the debt market crisis, a bank official in Germany told German Handelsblatt newspaper.

"We never had thought that the crisis could hit a major player like us who does not securitise its loans," managing director Walter Capellmann for Germany told the paper.

The mortgage lender, now part of Dutch-Belgian financial services group Fortis (FOR.BR: Quote, Profile, Research)(FOR.AS: Quote, Profile, Research), would currently make a loss on every new loan because it was not able to pass on higher hedging costs to customers, he said.

ABN Amro, whose German property financing business had a loan portfolio amounting to a good 850 million euros ($1.35 billion), was not immediately available for comment.

U.S.-based GMAC Financial Services also froze its residential property financing business in January after the market turmoil that had made refinancing harder. (Reporting by Mantik Kusjanto; editing by Elaine Hardcastle)