.....while at the other end of the spectrum.... Sydney home of Hong Kong telco tycoon yours for $41 million-plus By Lucy Macken April 26, 2022 https://www.smh.com.au/property/new...ours-for-41-million-plus-20220426-p5ag7l.html Talking points The Foks received an offer for their former Hong Kong home of $173 million last year. The listing comes at bullish time in the Sydney trophy home market. Hong Kong telco tycoon Canning Fok and his wife are cashing in on Sydney’s bullish trophy home market by putting their Vaucluse home up for sale for more than $41 million. The listing comes less than a year after the long-time director of Vodafone Hutchison was appointed chairman of TPG Telecom after the resignation of the company’s billionaire founder David Teoh. The Queens Avenue residence in Vaucluse has views over Sydney Harbour. Fok, assistant of Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, is based in Hong Kong, where the South China Morning Post reported last year he had received an offer of about $173 million for his former family compound, made up of two neighbouring houses at the southern tip of Hong Kong Island. The Foks’ three-level Sydney home has five bedrooms, four bathrooms and a swimming pool with uninterrupted views to the Harbour Bridge. It is set on dress-circle Queens Avenue, which boasts some of Vaucluse’s best homes, including the 1920s mansion Villa Igiea, bought in 2015 for $52 million by Jin Lin, the head of property development giant Aqualand. Canning Fok was appointed chairman of TPG Telecom in May last year.Credit:Churchill Yik The Fok home is listed with Highland Property Double Bay’s Bill Malouf. Fok’s timing on the sale comes at a bullish time in the Sydney trophy market, given there are few homes for sale at this level and widespread agent reports of strong demand among buyers in the $40 million to $100 million range. Known as the “king of employees” in the Hong Kong press given his status previously as one of the city’s top taxpayers, Fok remains based in Hong Kong’s exclusive Repulse Bay, according to the most recent corporate filings. Fok’s wife, Eliza, has owned the Vaucluse residence in her name alone since 2010, when it last traded for $23.5 million. It is one of two houses built on a double block in 2005 by freight and transport industry boss Terry Tzaneros and his wife, Anne, who sold the smaller one next door in 2006 for $11.6 million. The five-bedroom residence was one of two on the street built by the Tzaneros family in 2005. The Tzaneros family have since upgraded to Point Piper, where they were one of last year’s biggest buyers, paying $38 million for the designer house of expat lawyer Sarah Cooke. Following last year’s bull run on trophy sales and a slew of top sales in the first few months of this year, the Fok residence is one of the most expensive properties for sale in Sydney. Earlier this month, medical entrepreneur Dr Glenn Haifer paid more than $60 million for the Darling Point residence of Lisa Allen, former wife of yachtie Matt Allen, ending a four-year marketing campaign. In February, prominent corporate lawyer John Landerer and his wife, Michelle, sold their Vaucluse mansion for more than $62 million to Helen Huang, wife of billionaire car dealer Yi Huang.
More ‘liar loans’ at ANZ than other banks: UBS survey Ayesha de Kretser Senior Reporter Apr 26, 2022 https://www.afr.com/companies/finan...z-than-other-banks-ubs-survey-20220426-p5ag70 The number of homebuyers overstating their financial position when applying for a home loan has not materially decreased despite stricter lending standards, UBS’s latest so-called “liar loans” survey has revealed. UBS banking analyst John Storey said while the overall trend showed the number of factual misstatements made had declined somewhat to 37 per cent in 2021, from a record 41 per cent in 2020, ANZ had bucked the trend. UBS survey shows more people lied on applications for ANZ home loans than at other banks. “All major banks except ANZ saw a decline in factual misstatements,” Mr Storey said. More than half of respondents, or 55 per cent, that had taken out a mortgage with ANZ in the six months to December 2021 indicated that they had lied in their application documentation. “We think this is particularly concerning, given: ANZ’s persistent declines in mortgage market share, and the fact that 81 per cent of the 93 respondents who misrepresented their ANZ-originated loan claim they were advised to do so by their banker,” Mr Storey said. “ANZ’s continued deterioration is at odds with the broader improvement in bank originated loan factual accuracy in 2022 across other major and regional banks.” But an ANZ spokesman said while the UBS report and others like it have been published for several years, during this time its delinquency rates have gone down. “Our numbers are as good as, if not better, than our peers, which provides a strong indicator of ANZ’s capacity to accurately verify loan applications,” a spokesman said. The UBS survey showed that the next highest percentage of customers that admitted misstating facts on loan applications was 40 per cent at Westpac, 30 per cent at Commonwealth Bank and just 19 per cent at National Australia Bank. NAB, which has digitised its loan process and seen strong growth over the past 12 months, saw its rate fall sharply, from 46 per cent in 2020. ANZ, however, has struggled to grow market share and suffered hefty blowouts in the time it takes to assess loans, meaning if the survey is correct it has suffered a double whammy of being slow and inaccurate. The ANZ spokesman said home loan applications through the branch network or brokers are always verified and with the introduction of Comprehensive Credit Reporting, the bank can, with the customer’s consent, access a range of additional data that has “significantly enhanced the ability to verify applications”. But with interest rates now tipped to rise more aggressively than expected in February, when the big banks stressed confidence that loan defaults would not rise substantially as long as the Reserve Bank moved to raise the cash rate in a gradual manner, fears are now growing in some corners of the market about the potential for growing mortgage stress. Mr Storey said there are pockets of the market that would be more susceptible to rising rates leading to customer troubles, with the shift in the interest rate cycle likely to expose some of the banks’ lending practices. But he said the banks had several defences, citing the fact that 51 per cent of customers are more than three months ahead on mortgage payments (versus 45 per cent pre-pandemic); 25 per cent of respondents have levels of savings buffers and emergency funds at hand to cover seven to 12 months’ repayments; and 39 per cent of respondents said their total household income is well above spending. “Our overall conclusion is that front-book borrowers, which are arguably higher risk, have capacity to withstand rising interest rates, although there are pockets where stress could emerge with RBA hikes exposing some vulnerability,” Mr Storey said. Another analyst who was not authorised to speak to media disagreed, however, warning against the banks’ glass half-full views on mortgage repayments that are ahead on average after the pandemic. “If 70 per cent of customers are ahead on mortgage repayments, that means 30 per cent of people are not, which I think is pretty worrying. When you add up the fact that people are misrepresenting their income to get loans, we could be gearing up for a big shock,” he said. In October, the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority increased the serviceability buffer for loans by 50 basis points to “at least” 300 basis points over the loan product rate, in a move that has cooled the property market by making it harder to get bigger loans. While some analysts expect APRA to introduce stricter debt-to-income ratios as a further measure, Mr Storey said he does not expect more macro-prudential policy tightening ahead. “The window for further macro-prudential tightening has effectively passed,” Mr Storey said. With the expectation that house prices will fall by about 5 per cent by the end of 2023 and RBA rate rises looking likely from June, which will quickly crimp debt serviceability, Mr Storey said the share of high debt-to-income loans above six times had already dropped, although they’re still at an elevated level.
Liar Loans are 2 words you don't want hear in relation to real estate -- that was the beginning of the collapse in the US real estate sector starting in Jan 2007. An orderly decline is okay but a large decline would lead to a cascade of losses which could trigger all kinds of nastiness. In the US the real problem wasn't actually the banks it was the shadow banks like mortgage-only corporations and the like. AIG and other insurance companies selling CDS' against the CMOs & CDOs were another problem but I assume Australia doesn't have that problem.
The only problem Australia, (the lucky country which has everything, but I digress) has wrong with it, at the helm are a bunch of retard white collar marketing gurus who believe bs and spiel will see us right.
The irony of the present ruling Australian government.... can't make this shit up.... Reality of our time’: Dutton warns Australians to prepare for war By Angus Thompson April 25, 2022 Defence Minister Peter Dutton has warned Australia needs to prepare for war in light of the looming threat from China and global insecurity spurred by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In an Anzac Day television interview, Dutton cast back to the Gallipoli campaign and the rising dictatorships of the 1930s in backing up Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s comments this morning that the “arc of authoritarianism” was troubling the region. Defence Minister Peter Dutton has warned Australia needs to prepare for war.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Dutton was asked about Morrison’s comment that Australia was setting up a “red line” in the Pacific over whether China would be allowed to build a military base in Solomon Islands after signing a controversial security pact. “The only way you can preserve peace is to prepare for war, and be strong as a country. Not to cower, not to be on bended knee and be weak. That’s the reality,” Dutton responded on Nine’s Today show on Monday morning...... Whilst in the meantime..... Scott Morrison effectively ditches his promise to establish a federal anti-corruption commission Scott Morrison has tried to inoculate himself against criticism about his unfulfilled promise of a federal anti-corruption body by saying he tabled the proposal. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP Katharine Murphy Political editor Wed 13 Apr 2022 Scott Morrison has effectively abandoned his promise to establish a federal anti-corruption watchdog, confirming he would only proceed with legislation in the new parliament if Labor agreed to pass the Coalition’s heavily criticised proposal without amendments. Morrison pledged before the 2019 election to legislate a federal integrity body in the parliamentary term that has just ended. The prime minister broke that promise, failing to introduce his own proposal before the 46th parliament was prorogued. On the hustings on Wednesday, Morrison was asked – given his previous undertaking to create the body – whether he would promise to put his proposal to a vote in the next parliament in the event the Coalition won the 21 May election. Morrison declined to make that promise...... Ie: Create an election smokescreen, song and dance about going to war with corrupt CCP/China just prior to an election in a display of 'toughness' while ducking and weaving about committing on going to war on corruption in your own backyard. LMAO Me thinks in my mind "Gutless wonders, puffing out chest, pretending to be strong", and they are asking Australians to vote them in again?
There was this article a couple of weeks ago: Young Aussies say they would REFUSE to fight for Australia and FLEE the country instead of resisting an invasion because of high house prices: 'Send the boomers... they have the most to lose' https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ustralia-against-China-house-prices-high.html
Pre-election rate rise a new hurdle for Prime Minister Scott Morrison Prime Minister Scott Morrison is sweating over potential interest rate hikes as inflation spikes to its highest level in more than two decades. Alex Druce April 27, 2022 https://www.news.com.au/finance/eco...k/news-story/2796f5efa42caf1aa953c665250fd9ad Fears inflation could spark rate hike Homeowners, economists and even Prime Minister Scott Morrison face an excruciating six-day wait to see whether the strongest inflation print since the introduction of the GST will be enough to trigger an RBA interest rate hike. Consumer prices surged by 2.1 per cent during the March quarter, with the annual rise now at a more-than 20-year peak of 5.1 per cent, easily outstripping what the market expected on Wednesday. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the figure was a reminder that Australians lived in a “complex and volatile economic environment” and he pointed to the war in Ukraine as a key reason that fuel prices, for example, have leapt 11 per cent. [ edit: Yeah, sshhhhh, let's shove the greater house and rentals price madness under the mat at this time]. However, the immediate question for borrowers and analysts is undoubtedly whether prices are hot enough for RBA Governor Philip Lowe and his board to announce a controversial pre-election interest rate hike on Tuesday May 3.
Should Morrison get booted from the plum job in Canberra, there will be the convenient face saving excuse available "...it was because of the inconvenient timing of an interest rate increase...", whereas the most obvious reason to many who think in real terms, it was about him being more concerned about holding office as a marketing jerk. I can't help thinking, where would Ukraine be today if Morrison were the leader in place of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. God help the world.