What happens if interest rates rise, and how does one strategize…? In terms of the expectations of some of Australia’s most respected interest rate commentators, they generally see higher interest rates moving forward, but not quite as high as the market is currently pricing. For example last week Westpac’s Bill Evans revised the bank’s projections…
Some homebuyers are looking at the property market now and thinking “how will we ever afford to buy the XYZ house we want to live in…?” Not only have the last 12 months resulted in a substantial uplift in house prices, but the amount of money people can also borrow has been reduced by approximately…
Fuelled largely by a reduction in ‘assessment rates’ – the interest rate lenders use in their serviceability calculations, borrowing capacities for certain clients have increased 10% over the past couple of months. Here are two examples from recent tests we’ve done for clients… * NAB broker serviceability calculator, accessed 15 November 2020 (previous version) and…
I have had a number of people contact me recently about wanting to establish property investment portfolios. One such person referenced Steve McKnight’s book “From 0 to 260+ properties in 7 years” (published in 2012) and asked me what’s necessary to embark on this kind of journey. I’m the last person to get in the…
Anyone in lending will tell you that assessments for home loans and investment loans have tightened since Covid, however the scrutiny around living expense assessments has noticeably softened. Lenders seem more concerned about the continuity of a borrower’s income and this is likely to remain the case now that the “shiraz and wagyu” dispute between…
I’ve seen a number of quite alarming headlines recently that there’s going to be a wave of mortgage defaults in September/ October once the relief measures like Jobkeeper and loan repayment deferrals end simultaneously. Here’s an alternative point of view… Firstly, readers can take comfort that the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the banking…
Good news… before applying for your home or investment loan, you may no longer have to scrimp on beans and rice. In breaking news for home loan industry yesterday, the Federal Court dismissed allegations against Westpac that it breached responsible lending laws more than 250,000 times between 2011 to 2015. In 2017, the corporate regulator…
The process for obtaining commercial finance, and preparing for a commercial purchase, is a lot different to what many investors would be familiar with in the residential setting. So let’s look at some of the key differences between commercial and residential lending to help you understand the difference. Commercial finance examples – for commercial property…
Attention home buyers… as of now, the amount you can borrow may have just increased by as much as 14 per cent. The banking regulator APRA has now officially set new rules for how the banks calculate your borrowing capacity. When conducting their serviceability tests, lenders were previously made to do calculations based on an…
Well didn’t the new financial year start with a bang! The RBA has now made its first back-to-back rate cut since the European bank crisis in 2012, and the cash rate is now at an historic low of 1 per cent. There’s also more good news for the property market with signs of lending restrictions…