The latest lending figures released by the ABS confirm renewed confidence among home-buyers. Australians borrowed 2% more in June than they did in May. Financing issued to owner-occupiers rose 2.4% to $12.4 billion, while investment loans increased 0.5% to $4.37 billion. The figures do not include refinancing. "In June, we saw rises in new lending
You are not your spending thoughts. Spending without thinking about the long-term consequences is a problem. And by the long term, I mean just 30 days from now when the credit-card statement arrives. Some people label this type of spending “impulsive.” Others use the word “urge” to describe the feeling that comes just before they
Almost half of Australians are living from pay to pay. These figures from a recent Finder survey of 1,780 Australians reveal 46% – the equivalent of more than 5.9 million working Aussies – are unprepared to cope with a job loss, admitting they couldn’t survive financially for more than a month if they suddenly lost
35% of Australians are embarrassed by financial situation. Mortgage Choice and CoreData’s Financial Fitness Whitepaper has revealed that a significant number of Australians are embarrassed by their financial situation. 34% of respondents say they feel embarrassed by their financial habits. Furthermore, it revealed that 42% of Australians feel embarrassed by their personal debt, and one third hide
Brisbane house prices could rise up to 20 per cent over the next three years, the largest increase in national house prices for the period, according to BIS Oxford Economics. The economic forecaster expects the increase in Brisbane’s median house price over the three years to June 2022, although it anticipates most of this growth
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 assessment rate
On average Australian householders are millionaires. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ latest Household Income and Wealth Australia 2017-18 report Australia’s average household wealth has passed the $1 million mark for the first time, up more than 37 per cent compared with a decade ago, thanks to property prices and surging superannuation balances. But when you
Brisbane’s property market has seen the median house price increase 1.5 per cent to reach a new high of $680,000. The findings come from the latest Real Estate Institute of Queensland Market Monitor report, which reveals capital growth in Brisbane suburbs for the 12 months to March, amid the nation's housing slump. And while the
Last weekend’s federal election saw the Coalition government returning to power in an election that saw policy on property taxation a hotly debated topic between the Liberal Party’s insistence of maintaining the status quo and the Labor Party’s intention to reform the taxation process. As a result, with the Coalition government’s win, many in the
APRA’s scrapping of the 7 per cent ‘stress test’ buffer on home loans will effectively see a 9 per cent increase in borrowing capacity for owner-occupiers which will rise to between 13 and 14 per cent if the RBA undertakes two interest rate cuts before the year is out. With the current ultra-low interest rate
