 Mortgage repayments easy for most
It seems the credit crunch and general economic woes are not affecting Australian home owners too much, with 75 per cent saying they are easily making their mortgage repayments. A survey by the Mortgage and Financial Association of Australia found that generally households are dealing with the global economic slowdown.
Several factors combined to ease the strain in time for Christmas, with four successive interest rate cuts being the most obvious. Home owners saw home loan rates fall from nearly 10% to below 7% in just three months. This was coupled with an increase to the first home buyer grant. The association's chief executive Phil Naylor spoke on ABC Radio and highlighted the factors that were helping to boost consumer confidence.
"We've seen fuel prices fall, we've seen the Government's introduction of the [higher] first home buyers' grant, which has been of assistance, and we're also seeing in some of our research that there's an expectation that housing prices will fall," he said.
The survey also shows that there has also been a 3 per cent increase in the number of people considering taking out a home loan.
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