Adelaide Bank tightens on failing regions

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From the AFR:

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, the nation’s fifth largest retail lender, is the latest major lender to crack down on property buyers with tougher valuation policies, bigger deposits and creating “high risk” locations.

The overhaul follows the bank reviewing more than 1400 postcodes around the nation to cap its exposure to market hotspots, particularly in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Darwin by requiring minimum deposits of up to 40 per cent in some suburbs.

Lenders are responding to pressure from the Reserve Bank of Australia, corporate and prudential regulators to reduce lending to higher risk investment borrowers, particularly for apartment markets in central Melbourne and Sydney.

Usual pro-cyclical stupidity. Tighten on Sydney and Melbourne and loosen elsewhere.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.