Around 6,000 home loan borrowers have been paying too much on their home loans to the Bank of Queensland due to bank errors, totalling $12 million, reported Property Observer.
Mortgage owners were overcharged due to software errors failing to link offset account balances with the borrowers’ home loan accounts.
The latest Fitch Rating Dinkum Index showed that the number of Australian home loan borrowers falling behind their home loan repayments rose by 40% in the December quarter of 2012.
Delinquencies also rose by 3%. These figures highlight the need for Australians to take advantage of the low interest rates currently available for home loans.
Research from Halifax revealed that the average UK total annual mortgage payment is down £980 pounds compared with 2008, as the cost of owning and running a home has increased.
Halifax data showed that average home loan payments are down 21% in comparison with five years ago, while the cost of owning and running the average home has increased from 2012 by 1.9%.
England’s housing market continued to improve as the demand for home loans and mortgages rose sharply in February.
Gross mortgage lending from non-bank institutions reached 2.5 billion in February, 39% higher than 2012. Bank of England data showed that lending rose to £866 million in February 2013 from only £287 million in January.
Loan Market claim that most Australians will not consider refinancing a loan unless they can achieve $3,000 in annual savings.
A poll by Loan Market of 412 respondents provided the following results:
Even as Australia has seen substantial home loan interest rate falls over the last year, fewer Australians can say they are debt-free.
According to research by St George Bank and the Melbourne Institute, 40% of Australians said they were debt-free at the end of the December quarter for 2012. The number is 2.7% lower than for the same period of 2011.
First-home buyers are not rushing into the market despite low home loan interest rates and high rental prices, said Kevin Boyle on the Mozo website.
First-home buyers only made up 14.9% of all borrowers in December. This is the lowest level Australia has seen since 2004 while the property market is increasingly appealing among investors, according to reports on the Sydney Morning Herald.
Home loan rates have probably hit the bottom of the cycle after an increase in fixed rate home loan interest rates by the four big banks.
Westpac was the first bank to reduce rates below 5% and now is leading the way with an increase to 5.29%. Other banks are expected to follow Westpac very soon.
Home buyers should expect a double-digit explosion in asset prices as the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) cash rate cuts on property prices makes its full impact, believes Christopher Joye from The Australian Financial Review.
According to RP Data, assessments of residential transactions across Australia since 2000 showed that 2.3% of those who sold houses back in 2003, sold at a loss. That number has increased to 13.4% for all sales of 2012.
Economists predict that even cheaper home loan interest rates will soon be available, according to a survey by Bloomberg. Currently the lowest rates on offer start at 4.79%.
According to the report by Bloomberg, the majority of the economists surveyed believe that the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) cash rate will remain the same in April of this year. Only two of the experts said that the cash rate for April would be cut.