Welcome to The Singapore Property Blog
Here, I will give my insights to the Singapore Property market, how it’s doing and what can be expected.
Also included will be properties that I’m currently marketing.
Do bookmark this site as I will be updating it regularly with insights as well as reports on the current state of the market.
Benjamin Seow
PropertyGuru.com.sg :
Home loan approvals in Australia rebounded unexpectedly in March, as more buyers took advantage of the central bank’s back-to-back reduction in mortgage rates late last year.
According to data released yesterday by the statistics bureau, the number of loans approved to build or buy homes ticked up 0.3 percent from February after dropping 2.5 percent.
Yesterday’s data and last week’s unexpected decline in unemployment prompted Glenn Stevens, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), to halt rate reductions at next month’s meeting.
The central bank slashed the benchmark rate by half a percentage point this month following quarter-point reductions in November and December last year as home prices dropped, inflation slowed and the local economy struggled to get a stronghold.
“Declining property prices, improving affordability and rising auction clearance rates indicate appetite for owner-occupied housing finance is gradually rising,” said Katrina Ell, an economist at Moody’s Analytics in Sydney.
“But stubbornly weak confidence about future economic conditions is preventing a strong revival.”
Related Stories:
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PropertyGuru.com.sg :
Millions of homeowners across the UK are facing more mortgage hikes as a direct result of the Eurozone debt crisis.
Several lenders are also imposing ‘stealth’ changes to their mortgage range, making it harder for borrowers to qualify for loans.
Since the financial crisis, lenders have been implementing strict lending criteria such as asking for more information about the borrower’s financial condition. But in recent weeks, they have been making further tweaks, further reducing the number of approved loans.
“Lenders are now making a lot of stealth changes to make it tougher to get a mortgage,” said Andrew Montlake from mortgage broker Coreco.
“Together with increasing their rates, they are carefully controlling their market share so they do not get deluged with business they can’t cope with.”
For instance, Halifax has restricted the availability of its two-year, fixed-rate loans for customers who want to remortgage through a broker. Although it previously offered packages of up to 85 percent of the property price, it will now only lend up to 75 percent.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England said another mortgage rate hike is possible if funding costs remain high, as many banks look to restore their margins.
Related Stories:
China’s big four see new home loans stall
ResCap to quit financing US$ 1.7b in mortgages
Aussie mortgage approvals up in March