Some of the biggest movers and shakers in the real estate industry have come out in support of the Government’s calls to release the shackles of tight lending restrictions to get credit flowing again.
The CEOs of the nation’s biggest real estate companies were speaking at The Australian Financial Review Property Summit in Sydney last week and demanded the Government start stimulating business investment and cut red tape.
With the RBA cutting interest rates again this week to below 1 per cent, pressure continues to build on banks and regulators to start letting loans flow.
One of the CEOs to speak was Mirvac’s CEO Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz.
“Credit is flowing but it’s very painful for customers. It just takes so long.”
“Personally I just settled myself and it was a very painful process. It’s tortuous.”
“People tell us about being assessed on how many coffees they drink. It can get nonsensical about how much scrutiny there is.”
Ms Lloyd-Hurwitz told AFR that the country needs to get credit flowing again to avoid the possibility of a housing shortage.
“Very soon we are going to be in a supply shortage situation,” she said.
The value of total construction work was down 3.8 per cent in the June quarter, and RBA governor Philip Lowe said the construction downturn could lift property prices.
It seems to me quite possible that we could have a period now of rising housing prices because construction activity is slowing while the population is still rising quite quickly in the world,” he said.
“So there are some underlying drivers of housing prices.”
Recently the 10 per cent cap on investor lending growth, the 30 per cent cap on interest-only loans and the 7 per cent serviceability buffer have been lifted and all signs point to this being a taste of things to come.
