PHOTO: Some banks are taking up eight weeks to approve home loans as they are inundated with work, brokers report. Photo: Peter Rae
Home loan approval times have blown out to up to eight weeks as extra COVID-19 crisis-related processes and the sheer number of customer inquiries take their toll, mortgage brokers say.
In pre-pandemic times, home-buying hopefuls were able to get a response from a financial institution within a week to get the ball rolling on their application.
But with a steady stream of first-time purchasers, refinancing requests and record number of loan deferrals being processed due to the pandemic-sparked recession, the banks are under the pump.
It comes as the value of new home loans that were granted rebounded 6.2 per cent in June as the economy reopened after the first wave of the coronavirus crisis, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released on Wednesday and covering the period before Melbourne’s new outbreak.
But the value of new loans remains down on previous months, against a backdrop of a mammoth $274 billion in deferred repayments of home loans and small business loans.
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