The Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia (MFAA) has today expelled Accredited Mortgage Consultant, Mr Anh-Tuan Pham and the company of which he is Director, Freedom Finance & Property Group Pty Ltd, Footscray VIC, for misconduct.

The MFAA’s Disciplinary Tribunal stated, “Mr Anh-Tuan Pham of Freedom Finance & Property Group Pty Ltd engaged in dishonest conduct by manufacturing, and then submitting to a lender, income supporting documentation from a company of which he was a Director, for two individuals who were not in his employ, to enable those individuals to obtain finance.”

This conduct was contrary to clause 42 of the MFAA Code of Practice which states, “A Member must not engage in any acts or omissions of a misleading, dishonest, deceptive or fraudulent nature.”
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Property prices in Sydney’s inner and middle rings could rise by up to 10 per cent this year.

The Real Estate Buyer’s Agents Association of Australia (REBAA) said much depended on the effect of rising interest rates and tighter loan conditions.

But property prices will rise in key centres in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, with Sydney in particular set to benefit from pent-up demand and increases of up to 10 per cent, it said.

REBAA president Byron Rose said that after a busy end to 2009, investors continued to show keen interest into 2010, with more buyers around than properties.

“We expect the current high levels of buyer activity to continue for the first half of the year,” he said in a statement outlining the association’s market predictions.
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Movements on credit card interest rates by the big four banks over two years show banks have kept 85 per cent of the net benefit gained from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) interest rate cuts.

By March 1 the net impact of the RBA’s movements in the official cash rate over the last two years was a 3.5 per cent decline from the cycle’s high of 7.25 per cent in March 2008.

While banks passed on the majority of the RBA’s interest rate cuts to home loan borrowers, data from financial comparison website RateCity shows the big four kept 85 per cent, on average, of the net gains of the interest rate movements from credit card borrowers.

A comparison of movements in interest rates charged on both standard and low-rate personal credit cards over the past two years showed the net impact of rate hikes and cuts was an average drop of just 0.5 per cent.
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Housing loan approvals fell again in January as an increased flow of credit to investors was more than offset by the continued slide in lending to first home buyers.

The number of loans to home buyers fell by 7.9 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said on Wednesday.

It was the fourth fall in a row and the biggest for nine years.

It brought to the total to a 15-month low, 21 per cent below the peak in June.

The proportion of first-timers in the total fell to 20.5 per cent, also a 15-month low, well down from the recent peak of 28.5 per cent in May.
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Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Ltd has announced a new issue of residential mortgage backed securities.

The offer will be made under the bank’s Torrens securitisation program. The securities will be issued in Australian currency, with an expected equivalent value of $650 million.

The final tranche sizes will be determined by market conditions, Bendigo said on Wednesday.
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The Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) decision to raise interest rates in this month has failed to dent consumer confidence, a report says.

The Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment index rose 0.3 index points in March to 117.3 points, an increase of 0.2 per cent.

The RBA lifted the cash rate 25 basis points to 4.0 per cent, from 3.75 per cent, at its March board last week.

It was the fourth rate hike since October last year.

Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said it was a “solid result given he backdrop of an official rate rise”.
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Australia’s economic future will be challenged by an under-supply of capacity and housing, despite decades of economic reform shielding Australia from the worst of the global downturn, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) says.

The nation is entering a new phase of economic expansion with less spare capacity than was thought likely, with unemployment appearing to have peaked at around 5.8 per cent, RBA assistant governor (economics) Philip Lowe says.

“The issues we face are, therefore, quite different from those confronting most of the other advanced economies,” Dr Lowe told the Urban Development Institute of Australia National Congress on Wednesday.

“Elsewhere, the challenge is to get private demand to grow on a sustainable basis so that it can catch up with the supply potential of the economy.
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A benign labour force report for February will probably be sufficient for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to leave the official cash rate unchanged next month, economists say.

The jobless rate edged up to 5.3 per cent in February from a downwardly revised 5.2 per cent in January, with the number of people employed barely rising.

This was the first rise in the jobless rate since peaking at 5.8 per cent last October.

Just 400 jobs, seasonally adjusted, were added to the workforce in February, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed on Thursday.

“This is a steady result,” Employment Minister Julia Gillard told reporters in Canberra, adding employers move to taking on more full-time employees and reducing part-time work.
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Taking inspiration from the success of Zillow and Trulia’s ‘cool’ web site widgets, PriceFinder has recently released its own range of agent website tools for Australia. Widgets are an easy way to enhance your own website, increasing traffic and generating leads.

According to Kent Lardner, Chief Operating Officer of PriceFinder;
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Market leading non-bank financial services group, Aussie, has launched an exciting promise to customers that if they are not impressed by an Aussie broker’s service they will be paid $100.

The “Aussie Promise to Impress” builds on Aussie’s reputation for offering customers highly personalised mortgage broking service which translates into a better deal by meeting their needs.

Aussie’s founder and executive chairman Mr John Symond said the Aussie Promise was targeted at customers who are interested in using a broker or bank customers looking for a reason to switch in order to get a more personalised service for their home loan needs.
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LJ Hooker’s financial division supports industry organization, MFAA’s move toward encouraging its members to become fully qualified professional credit advisers.

MFAA’s proposed framework of tiered professional qualifications will see brokers qualify for a Certificate IV in Financial Services.

LJ Hooker Financial Services General Manager Peter Bromley says this level of qualification is already built into the division’s performance standards for its brokers.

“All our current brokers meet Certificate IV standards, which means they complete 30 hours of CPD a year, have a conversion ratio of 65 per cent, accreditation with a panel of at least 10 lenders and settle at least six loans per quarter.
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Many would-be home buyers have given up the dream of home ownership, hit by a triple whammy of rising interest rates, tougher lending conditions and an end to the federal government’s more generous grant.

A survey by mortgage broker Loan Market found 28 per cent of respondents said they had put off their home buying plans indefinitely, while 32 per cent said they were trying to save for a larger deposit.

The online survey of 260 potential first time home buyers found 33 per cent of respondents were still looking to buy a property this year.
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Investors have returned from summer holidays to grab their largest share of housing loans since at least 2004, according to a survey by a mortgage broker.

Australian Finance Group (AFG), which claims over 10 per cent of the mortgage market, said on Tuesday that 34.1 per cent of all mortgages it arranged nationally in February were for property investors.

That was the highest proportion for investors recorded in the six-year history of AFG’s survey of its brokers’ activity.
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A compromise has been reached on new land tax laws set to pass state parliament this week ahead of a new land tax regime to be drawn up with industry and brought in next year, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says.

Amendments to the Valuation of Land Amendment Bill, due to be debated last month, were delayed after industry groups opposed the changes as a money-grabbing exercise.

The changes were drawn up when a shopping centre won a court case that reduced its valuation, drawing concern the government would be forced to hand back millions in land tax if other appeals were also won.
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Business confidence and conditions strengthened in February a four month high, but growth remains below the highs seen in late 2009, a survey shows.

But businesses were caught unprepared for the surge in February, as inventories declined and hiring slowed.

The National Australia Bank (NAB) business confidence index gained four points to plus-19 points in February.

It was the survey’s highest level since November 2009 when it also touched plus 19 points, which at the time was a seven-year high.
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