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The Wall Street Journal had a blog post talking about Australian banks trying to sell mortgage backed securities to the American banks. http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/09/20/will-u-s-investors-buy-australias-mortgage-story/?mod=WSJBlog

I've heard that if you want one of the really juicy mortgage deals then you need to have 40% equity. So if you've held property for a while then it's possible. My guess is that either the banks are pricing in the risk of a housing market collapse, or they need to offer low rates to those with...

Good luck getting 2.5% for a new mortgage. The banks have widened their spreads, and most loans being offered are around 5%. I'm not sure what yields are like in general, though there are a lot of prime properties at 4% or so.

Another piece of UK-centric news. Lloyds (one of the too big to fail British banks) is restricting investment mortgages to cover a maximum of £2 million (about $3.5 million) and three properties. Details here and here.

For prices to triple in a 9 years you need a growth rate of 13% per annum. Australia's not been that strong consistently, but it's had its moments over the past decade. Furthermore bear in mind that British property prices bottomed out in 1996 or 1997 after the previous market crash in...

Does anyone else find this worrying? In 2006, shortly before the peak of the UK housing market, Northern Rock offered their Together loan of up to 125% of a property's value. Needless to say it didn't end well for those who took up this deal, and it's become symbolic of the excesses of the...