Jun 30

Residex, a well known property research company in Australia believes that brokers should concentrate on mortgage refinance in preference to first home buyer business. has advised brokers to concentrate on people looking to upgrade their home, renovators and investors instead of first home buyers.

Kim Davis, who looks after the firm’s MarketFacts broker service, told Broker News that the upgrader and investor markets have shown strong growth in the last year, and that brokers should concentrate on those markets pretty much to the exclusion of new home buyers.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that the first-time buyer market has fallen to 9% of total secured housing finance from 24% in less than a year, and the figures are still trending down.  The main issue with first home buyers is a lack of deposit.  Therefore a

>>Read more

Jun 30

Pepper Home Loans has acquired the $109 million loan portfolio of Bank of America-Merrill Lynch’s First Permanent.

The purchase includes $69 million of loans within a warehouse trust and residual income and capital units, with the option to buy a further $40 million in mortgages in July.

This acquisition is very significant for Pepper Home Loans as a company.

“We have undertaken extensive due diligence on the First Permanent loan book over recent months which confirms it to be one of the best underwritten loan books in the country. First Permanent has applied stringent credit criteria and property valuation processes to these loans, ensuring they were only made to borrowers with stable

>>Read more

Jun 30

Challenger Financial Services Group has targeted large commercial property mortgage deals and is intending to allocate up to $1billion dollars to commercial property mortgages.

Challenger, which is using its own balance sheet plus third-party mandates, has a view that commercial property offers high risk-adjusted returns.

It kicked off its high end commercial property loan strategy last year when it took up $95 million of the $305 million of debt securities issued by Macquarie CountryWide in a CMBS issue.

Since last year Challenger has contributed $155 million of a $355 million in finance, having structured and arranged commercial funding.

In its latest deal, finalised in the past month, it was the sole lender to Goodman Group in a $250 million deal that will refinance a CMBS maturing...

>>Read more

Jun 29

A Finance Business which offered short term loans with interest rates of 120 per cent a year has registered as a lender under new consumer credit laws that take effect on Thursday.

The registration of Steven Moujalli’s Artex Mortgages, based in Silverwater, in western Sydney, is a sign of challenges for the corporate regulator as it takes on licensing consumer credit providers nationally.

Adding to the challenges, ASIC has previously argued that a version of the licensing regime is flawed, and that it fails to exclude individuals who have behaved poorly in the past.