From the Sydney Morning Herald:
Banks could be forced to curb sales of mortgages after a feeding frenzy on housing over the past 18 months has seen their exposure to the property market hit record levels.
Last month, BHP Billiton’s outgoing chairman and former head of the National Australia Bank, Don Argus, likened the big banks to ”giant building societies”, accusing them of neglecting business lending to chase the mortgage market.
Of the big banks, the Commonwealth has the most concentrated exposure to the property market – 65 per cent of its lending book is tied up in mortgages. For Westpac and St George combined it is 62 per cent.
ANZ and NAB, which traditionally have a bigger exposure to business lending, have pumped up their mortgage exposure – it accounts for more than 50 per cent of their Australian loans books.
Could Australia experience a property crash, just like those in the USA, UK, Ireland, Spain … in fact, like most of the Western world?
Professor Steve Keen, the only Australian economist to forecast the Global Financial Crisis, believes our property bubble must burst too. It is just a matter of time.
Thanks to the Rudd Government’s doubling of the First Home Owners Boost, tens of thousands of (mostly) younger Australians were suckered into huge mortgages when interest rates were at their lowest. Now, with household debt levels at an all-time high, the experience of so many other nations says that our bubble will burst too.
“If you do not manage debt, debt manages you”.
Barnaby is right.
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