Home Loans, Mortgage Refinance, Bad Credit Home Loans

Hundreds of bank customers are about to launch a class action against their banks accusing them of acting outside of legislation when approving their home loans.

According to almost 300 borrowers and their families, banks have offered them loans which are outside of bank guidelines and which should not have been offered and now, the borrowers are facing losing their homes and some have already lost their homes because they are unable to afford their home loans.

Retired British insurance broker Roger Brown, who is orchestrating the case, has set up a website takingonbanks.com and is currently seeking claimants.

According to Mr Brown, many home and property owners are currently experiencing financial hardship through no fault of their...

Australians seem to have gone on to a spending spree yet again. Our credit card debt has reached a new record high of $50 billion, an increase of almost a third over the past five years.

New figures from the RBA issued today, show outstanding credit card debt has exceeded $50 billion for the first time in November, with $36.3 billion of the total accruing interest. It is no wonder that so may Australians are looking for debt consolidation loans.

With 15 million cards on issue, the average debt level per credit card has reached about $3333.

The amount of credit card debt owed by Australians has increased sharply over the past ten years with the most significant increase ocuring over the past 3 years.

As the Australian economy has steadily grown over the past decade, it’s logical that...

ASIC has been pressuring the COMMONWEALTH Bank to change potentially false and misleading advertising of its Wealth Package loans. As a consequence of pressure from ASIC and the Banking regulator, CBA has agreed to change their advertising material.

According to Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) some of CBA’s advertising material promoting its Wealth Package loans did not reflect the true cost of the loans.

ASIC was concerned the ads did not include a $350 annual fee in the advertised comparison rate.

Under the National Credit Code, advertising of credit products that include an annual percentage rate must also include a comparison rate. Such comparison rate needs to fully reflect the complete cost of these loans.

“Comparison rates help...

ANZ customers had received other customers loans electronic statements through a system glitch.

ANZ has acted quickly to remove its online bank statements after customers received electronic statements belonging to other people.

An ANZ spokesman said the bank had attempted to reload statements over the weekend and released them to a small batch of customers. However this resulted in the current problem as up to 60 of those customers were then able to view other people’s statements.

Currently ANZ online statements are disabled while the banks is attempting to fix this problem.

ANZ has issued a statement of apology to all affected customers.

While there is significant demand for no deposit loans and 100% home loans, lenders are unlikely to radically change lending criteria over the coming year.

Genworth Financial chief executive Ellie Comerford told the AFR that not withstanding the poor growth levels of 2011, there was an some minor improvement in demand for housing and consequently home loans towards the end of 2011. Much of the new demand was as a result of lender discounting. There is expectation that rates will be coming down further this year and lenders will maintain a high level of competition in the market.

Lenders are unlikely to start easing lending criteria given than many of the current restrictions were introduced in the aftermath GFC.

Lenders would be...

Non conforming unsecured personal loans are in huge demand, unfortunately there are no such loans available in Australia. Borrowers who have tried to borrow for debt consolidation or a holiday or just some spending money from their banks but were declined, are desperately trying to find a lender who would be able to help them online.

Unfortunately unsecured loans beyond a couple thousand generally have the same lending criteria no matter which lender the borrower makes an application through. There is simply no such financial product as a bad credit unsecured personal loan or a low doc unsecured personal loan.

If you have been declined for a personal loan with a bank because you have some paid defaults on your credit report, you will also be...

Experts believe that RBA will announce another cash rate cut in February.

According to recent domestic data, there is a real need for another rate cut, with both consumers and businesses are still low on confidence and high on caution. Loans is a dirty word with people spending less and saving more.

Another rate cut would take the official rate to only 4 per cent – 100 basis points above the lowest level ever

Overall the level of personal borrowing including personal loans, credit cards and car loans is down by over 1% during 2011.

“Australian consumers seem to have lost their interest in taking out loans for consumption and lifestyle purposes. Even the demand for loans to acquire assets is down.

“Housing credit...

In the period coming up to Christmas domestic credit card loans went up to over $40.6 billion in November. This was the first time the credit card loans had eclipsed $40 billion.

Now in the post Christmas period many more Aussies are struggling with recently acquired  credit card debts. Many more are now actively looking for debt consolidation loans.

Even if you find it difficult to qualify for debt consolidation loans it is important to maintain monthly repayments to ensure that your debts and loans are in order.

Financial Counselling Australia executive director Fiona Guthrie says the best way to deal with this debt “is sit down and go back to basics”.

“You might need to reassess your spending...

The international credit ratings agency, Moodys, has yesterday reaffirmed that Australia will retain it’s AAA credit rating.

Australia’s “high economic resiliency and financial strength” and reasonably low debt levels were the key to Moody’s decision to retain its Australian rating at a health AAA level.

It followed last month’s upgrade of Australia’s credit rating to AAA by Fitch.

More than 500 European banks tapped the central bank’s credit program, accepting about 489 billion in loans.

Economists had expected the banks to take up about 300 billion in funds.

The development came after Moody’s warned earlier this week that Britain’s AAA rating could be under threat if the European crisis worsened.

A...

There are expectations in the Australian Property industry that the real estate market will experience some recovery during 2012.

Speaking to The Adviser, Australian Property Monitors senior economist Andrew Wilson said the property market should undergo a “modest recovery” in 2012, boosting the lending industry through more home loans being take out as well as the economy overall as property owners see themselves recover some of the home equity lost during 2011.

While there is no expectation of a boom, a modest recovery is certainly on the cards.

OECD is predicting economic growth in the order of 4% for Australia next year.

On the back of this stronger growth, consumers should start spending more, and taking out more loans. Over the past 12 months the whole country...