Mortgage news archive-2Banks accused of credit card greed The Courier mail 22nd June 2002: Stephen Wardill.
"Looking for home mortgage finance? Try Mr Mortgage first for 100 percent home loans, 95 percent mortgage refinancing with debt consolidation and 95% lo doc mortgage loans and bad credit mortgages now." Consumer affairs Reporter Banks have artificially pumped up interest rates on credit cards, but failed to pass on savings when the official interest rate dropped. Figures from Bank Industry watch dog bank Choice show Australia's big four banks passed on as little as 0.75% in rate cuts from February last year to April this year, while official rates decreased two percent. The revelation came a day after the Reserve bank of Australia disclosed households paid a record $2.3 billion in bank fees last year.... Boiling house prices to cool The Courier mail 15th June 2002: Graeme James Brisbane's booming house market may come over the boil in about two years, according to Doctor Shane Oliver, Chief Economist at AMP Henderson Global investors. however he notes that Brisbane is so far avoiding an environment of the Southern States that is becoming unfavourable for house prices. He says that a combination of rising vacancy rates, falling renting yields and rising interest rates suggests that the recent surge in house prices is becoming unsustainable particularly in the booming Sydney and Melbourne markets........ Outlook negative for investors in housing The Weekend Australian 8-9th June, 2002: Alan Wood. For some of us it will end in tears as interest rates rise. To get a feel for what could happen in housing markets we really need to start in the 1980's with corporate balance sheets. The eighties were the decade of financial deregulation and the first beneficiaries of that were companies, with newly freed banks falling over themselves to lend them money. A combination of inexperience and cupidity meant a lot of this lending was unwise. The Bonds and the Skase's were only the most visible exponents of high borrowing, and share and property speculation. The 1987 crash in the share market sent a surge of funds into property just as the reserve Bank cut rates because of the fears of the impact of the share crash on the economy. When the property bubble burst. It left behind over geared corporate balance sheets, and damaged banks. The first half of the nineties were taken up with repairing these balance sheets. Initially house holds were the victims of the collapse, not only as shareholders and employees but because the RBA turned a blind eye to fat profit margins on home lending as the banks built their balance sheets..... | 
