PHOTO: House prices have held up better than expected and previous forecasts of crashes are being revised. CREDIT: GLENN HUNT
Thousands of Victorians have extended their home loan holidays, leaving them at risk of falling house prices and an outlier from the rest of the nation which has started moving back to normal repayments.
Latest data from the country’s biggest housing lender, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, shows 93,000 people are still not paying their home loans and 17,300 people extended their repayment break. Victorians are over-represented in the cohort of those taking an additional holiday from their payments at 43 per cent.
The rest of the country has started to see improvement, and 21,000 people overall have returned to their usual payments. About $133 billion worth of mortgages were not being repaid in September, or about 7.4 per cent of the $1.8 trillion sector, new Australian Prudential Regulation Authority data shows. This is down from 11 per cent in May at the height of the crisis.
This could mean that double-digit property price crash expectations for the major market of Melbourne may still bear out. The Commonwealth Bank lifted its price fall expectations nationally in September but still expects a double-digit drop in Melbourne property prices in the year to June 2021 of 10.2 per cent.
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