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Foreclosures rise as more Australian borrowers fail to repay

Banks  and building societies have repossessed 22.5 per cent more homes than in 2010,  with western Sydney and big regional centres in NSW  hardest hit. Lenders  asked the NSW Supreme Court to issue 2466 writs of possession against borrowers in default in the 10 months to November last year. The number of writs issued in the same period in 2010 was  2143, indicating heavier financial pressure... [Read more]

The dark side of the boom in Australia

Graham Evans has lived in Dampier, on the Pilbara coast, for 43 of his 50  years. As a boy, he rode the school bus with the famous  Red Dog, and swam off  the beach in a now-vanished children’s enclosure, near where a busy hub for  commercial seacraft now sits. Evans’ livelihood is linked to the resources sector that dominates Dampier  and nearby Karratha; his business, Australian... [Read more]

APRA angry as Westpac reclassifies $28.8 million in Australian mortgages

WESTPAC has infuriated the peak banking regulator and the opposition has called for an explanation after the bank revealed that it had incorrectly classified $28.8 billion in property loans for up to three years. Australia’s second-largest bank had been recording the loans as belonging to owner-occupiers since November 2008, when in fact they had been used for investment purposes. [Read more] ShareTweetShare... [Read more]

Risky home loans – avoid shared equity mortgages: Choice

A shared equity or shared appreciation mortgage (SAM) works differently from a normal home loan: You borrow, say, 20% of the value of the property as a SAM and instead of paying interest on it, you’re charged a percentage of the capital gain when you sell. For the remaining percentage of the home’s value (minus your deposit) you take out a normal home loan. This means your monthly repayments are... [Read more]

Risky home loans – avoid guarantees: Choice

Your lender may ask you for a guarantee from someone, such as your parents, if it thinks you might not be able to cover the loan repayments yourself. If you don’t have a deposit, a guarantee may also mean you don’t have to pay mortgage insurance and have a wider choice of loans. Guarantors usually use their home as security, and traditionally they were liable for the full amount of the home loan.... [Read more]

Risky home loans – avoid no-deposit home loans: Choice

Several financial institutions offer a home loan for the full purchase price, or close to it.  However, this comes at a cost: Mortgage insurance usually applies if you have less than a 20% deposit. No-deposit loans can also have a higher interest rate, especially compared to basic loans. Mortgage insurance doesn’t insure you, but the lender. It protects the lender if you default on the loan and... [Read more]

Risky home loans – avoid 40-year mortgages: Choice

CHOICE crunched the numbers and found that extending a mortgage to 40 years doesn’t make it much more affordable, and costs you many thousands of dollars more in the long term. On a $250,000 loan with an interest rate of 8%, your repayments would be about $100 per month cheaper: $1738 per month over 40 years instead of $1834 over 30 years. But it’ll cost you. Over the 40 years you’ll pay nearly... [Read more]

Risky home loans what to avoid: Choice

With first homes averaging $430,000 and housing affordability at a record low, new types of loan may seem an answer to the prayers of desperate home buyers — but are they? In this article,  Choice takes a look at these new loans: 40-year mortgage   Spreading your repayments over a longer period means lower minimum repayments, but you’ll pay much more in interest. No-deposit home loan   With... [Read more]

Protected: Leading Australian property spuikers for 2011 exposed

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Standard & Poor’s warns provision of Eurozone £407.5bn in cheap loans does not improve bank credit ratings

The European Central Bank’s (ECB) unprecedented provision of a €489bn (£407.5bn) in cheap loans will “buy valuable time” for eurozone banks but has not improved their credit outlook, a director of Standard & Poor’s (S&P) has warned. Amid a fresh raft of poor eurozone economic data, Scott Bugie, head of S&P’s financial institutions division doused the... [Read more]

Fitch cuts Asia 2012 growth outlook: no denying global financial decline

Global ratings agency Fitch on Friday cut its 2012 growth outlook for Asia to 6.8 per cent from 7.4 per cent previously, citing the weak global economy. For 2011, the region is seen growing at 7.1 per cent, it said in a statement. The downgrade was also to reflect the impact of policy tightening measures in some of the region’s economies, notably China and India where taming high inflation has... [Read more]

Property expert dismisses Australian housing shortage report as “spin”

Property market analyst Michael Matusik has dismissed government forecasts that Australia is heading for a massive undersupply of housing over the next two decades, arguing that politics and “vested interests” are at play. The National Housing Supply Council’s State of Supply Report for 2011 forecasts that at the current rate of new housing construction, Australia will have a shortfall of 640,000... [Read more]

Australian buyers saving pennies and hurting property market

Lack of buying activity from retirees and wealthy professionals, in particular, is exacerbating WA’s embattled residential property market, CBRE says. Global economic volatility and weak consumer sentiment have caused the local property sector to suffer, with massive stock levels, declining prices and no immediate recovery in sight. The latest Residential MarketView report from CBRE suggests... [Read more]

New reality owing more than you own: 60,000 families in Australia in negative equity

Rising property values have been an article of faith in the housing market for a generation of Australians who borrowed big as real estate prices marched ever upward. Now, though, some buyers are finding that their homes are worth less than the size of mortgages taken out to acquire the proverbial roof over their heads. While the percentage of home owners with so-called negative equity remains tiny... [Read more]

Australia in the grip of unemployment crisis with 100,000 jobs set to be slashed after Christmas: not a recipe for property recovery

AUSTRALIA is on the brink of an unemployment catastrophe, with up to 100,000 jobs set to be slashed in the months after Christmas. But the news isn’t all bad, with economists suggesting the nation’s wobbly economy could drive the official cash rate as low as 3.5 per cent by the end of 2012, The Daily Telegraph reports. Westpac chief economist Bill Evans, one of the few economists who correctly... [Read more]

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