Australia's Home Loan Delinquencies Narrow Down --Fitch Ratings
Home loan delinquencies have strongly fell for the second consecutive quarter with new jobs boosting residents' ability to re-pay their home mortgages, Fitch Ratings said.
In a note to clients regarding Australia's residential mortgage performance index, Fitch Ratings said homeowners falling behind on their mortgage payments by more than 30 days declined by 17 basis points to 1.52% in the third quarter.
This is a positive development for Australia's home property industry needing a boost after months in the doldrums.
"The unemployment rate was 5.3 percent as of November 2011, the economy is strong and the recent rate cuts passed on to borrowers will likely offset some of the increased Christmas and holiday season pressure anticipated," Courtney Miller, an analyst at Fitch, wrote in the statement. "Softening housing prices could impact future 90-plus days' delinquencies."
The number of "low-doc" loans more than 30 days late declined to 6.4 percent in the third quarter from 6.6 percent in the previous three months.
Australia's biggest mortgage broking firm, the Australian Finance Group (AFG) has registered an 18.4% increase in mortgages processed in November worth an estimated $2.9 billion.
The AFG said in its website that investors had been spurred by the interest rate cut imposed by the central bank. Some financial pundits and analysts are again anticipating another rate cut on Tuesday's Reserve Bank meeting.
The data on mortgages published by the AFG on a monthly basis had indicated fixed rate loans fell to just 17.2%, with stand variable loans taking a 63.1% share. The average size of all mortgages rose to $396,000 from $395,000.
An Analysis of Australia Residential Property Market, according to GPG
A subdued consumer spending and a lackadaisical economic growth had softened the growth of the real estate market in Australia this year.
It was only in October that Australia's local banks and other financial intermediaries gained more confidence in providing housing credit to borrowers as monthly and yearly increases were recorded, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).
Housing credit increased by 0.4% over October, following an increase of 0.5% over September. Over the year to October, housing credit rose by 5.7%, the latest financial aggregates report from the RBA has revealed.
The banking industry in Australia, however, has taken a cautiously optimistic stance in their loan portfolio with a new website doingittough.info, designed to help property loan borrowers in distress.
Aussie Bankers' new website for property borrowers
The Australian Bankers' Association (ABA) has established a new website that could come to the aid of homeowners having difficulty paying off their bank loans.
ABA chief Mr. Steve Munchenberg says the website is a way for property loan borrowers to communicate with their banks and figure out ways of obtaining some financial assistance if they could no longer service their loans.
Mr Munchenberg notes that during dire financial difficulties, consumers have in the past cast aside the valuable option to contact their banks.
"In reality the bank has a bunch of programs in place to help people in those situations. We would rather find out if you're under pressure early to make sure we can all work through that, rather than have people hide that fact and then get into a state where it's much harder to pay it all back," Mr Munchenberg says.
The Real Estate Institute of Australia says that a serious concern nowadays is that a large portion of household incomes among Australians are spending on mortgage payments.