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Australian Banks Tighten Mortgage-Lending Requirements for Foreigners
Banks’ tolerance for risk wanes as Australia’s housing market and commodity-driven economy slow
Apartment blocks stand in the suburb of Breakfast Point in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016. ENLARGE
Apartment blocks stand in the suburb of Breakfast Point in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG NEWS
By ROBB M. STEWART
April 19, 2016 4:46 a.m. ET
0 COMMENTS
MELBOURNE, Australia—Australia’s biggest banks are toughening lending criteria for home loans to foreigners.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia Ltd., the country’s biggest bank by market value and the largest mortgage-lender, as of Monday tightened requirements for some foreigners with applications involving self-employment and temporary visas. That echoed a move last month by Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.
Australian lenders—who have enjoyed years of relatively low levels of bad debts—are losing their appetite for risk as the country’s red-hot housing market shows signs of slowing and stresses mount for resources companies amid a slump in commodity prices. Authorities last year also pushed banks to tighten lending standards as they worried that speculative home-loans were fueling house prices and that banks would loosen lending standards as they scrambled for market share amid a record low central-bank cash rate.
Foreign investment into Australian real estate has been booming, accounting for about 50% of the value of all investment approvals granted by the country in the last financial year. A large proportion of the property investments involved Chinese investors, government data showed.
Nonresident Chinese own a small portion of Australia’s housing stock but the central bank recently said they account for a significant and increasing share of purchases, particularly apartments in Sydney and Melbourne. In its latest assessment of the financial system, released last week, the Reserve Bank of Australia warned that if a significant subset of property buyers, such as increasingly important Chinese buyers, reduced demand sharply it would weigh on housing prices. Such a reduction in housing demand could come from a sharp economic slowdown in China or a further tightening of capital controls by Chinese authorities, it said
Still, the central bank said the Australian banking system has little direct exposure to Chinese investors. While Australian-owned banks engage in some lending to foreign households to purchase Australian property, the amounts are small relative to their mortgage books, it said.
The changes introduced by Commonwealth Bank include no longer allowing foreign currency income as an eligible source of income in home-loan application, as well as lowering the maximum ratio for loans to 70% of the value of the property from 80% previously for certain foreign residents living and working in Australia and being paid in Australian dollars.
“We constantly review and monitor our home-loan portfolio to ensure we are maintaining our prudent lending standards and meeting our customers’ financial needs,” a spokesman for the bank said Tuesday.
Like other banks in Australia, Commonwealth Bank last year lifted mortgage rates on home loans to investors in response to a call by the industry regulator to curb lending to local property speculators.
Last month, mortgage brokers received a letter from ANZ saying it was changing foreign-income thresholds and increasing the documents required to include all visa information, employment contracts and three months of pay slips. The note said it also would no longer accept applications from borrowers that only have income from overseas, and would fix the maximum loan-to-value ratio at 70% for applicants with foreign income of more than 50% of their total.
A spokeswoman for National Australia Bank Ltd. said the lender on April 9 tightened its loan limit for foreign applicants to 70% of home values from 80%, and that settings were continually reviewed.
In March 2015, the former federal treasurer ordered the sale of a 39 million Australian dollar (US$30.2 million) Sydney property that he ruled had been purchased illegally by a foreign-owned company. Since then, the Australian Taxation Office ruled that more than 25 further homes unlawfully held by foreign nationals would be sold.
Proposed investment in residential real estate increased to A$60.8 billion in the year to mid-2015, from A$34.7 billion the year before, with a further A$36.2 billion of proposed investment in commercial real estate, according to data from the Foreign Investment Review Board.
Approved foreign investment in residential and commercial real estate reached A$96.9 billion in the 2015 financial year, compared with A$74.6 billion the year before, according to data from the Foreign Investment Review Board.
Write to Robb M. Stewart at robb.stewart@wsj.com
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