Swamped Citi slams door on foreign buyers

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Via the AFR:

Citigroup is set to limit overseas mortgage lending to elite high net worth clients with minimum deposits or investments of $250,000 because of concerns about its capacity to handle the number of applications following the withdrawal of most other major Australian banks.

Citi, which last year banned key Asian currencies from buying Australian real estate, has told mortgage brokers and other business partners the ban applies immediately. It was one of the few remaining lenders offering mortgages to overseas’ buyers.

“To maintain a balanced portfolio, and to ensure we can maintain adequate loan processing times, Citi will now only offer overseas’ loans to Citi’s existing and prospective Citigold clients,” Matt Wood, head of mortgages’ distribution, has said in a letter to clients.

Another one bites the dust.

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.