“The October 2013 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices addressed changes in the standards and terms on, and demand for, bank loans to businesses and households over the past three months. Domestic banks, on balance, reported having eased their lending standards and having experienced little change in loan demand, on average, over the past three months. The survey contained two sets of special questions. Motivated by the increase in long-term interest rates since the spring, the first set of questions asked banks to describe whether they had experienced changes in the volume of applications for residential mortgages and whether they had changed lending policies for new home-purchase loans. The second set of questions examined the standards and terms on subprime auto loans over the past 12 months. This summary is based on the responses from 73 domestic banks and 22 U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks. Regarding loans to businesses, the October survey results generally indicated that banks eased their lending policies for commercial and industrial (C&I) loans and experienced little change in demand for such loans over the past three months. All domestic banks that eased their C&I lending policies cited increased competition for such loans as an important reason for having done so. Almost all foreign respondents indicated that their standards remained basically unchanged and that, on balance, they had experienced insignificant change in demand for C&I loans in the third quarter. On net, domestic and foreign institutions also reported having eased standards and experienced increased demand for commercial real estate (CRE) loans.”