How Do We Know That Mortgage Arrears Are Now Rising In Australia?

The latest RBA bulletin, just released, contained a couple of significant articles relating to mortgage arrears and serviceability. The first, “Recent Drivers of Housing Loan Arrears” shows that Housing loan arrears rates have increased from low levels since late 2022, with banks expecting them to rise a bit further from here. High LVR and DTI loans are most at risk. No surprise there.

The second, “How the RBA Uses the Securitisation Dataset to Assess Financial Stability Risks from Mortgage Lending” makes the point that the data used relating to around one third of loans, contains lags of up to 2 years especially for highly leverage loans, which limits the usefulness of that dataset.

Securitisation data collected by the RBA, forming the Securitisation Dataset, on residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) as a condition for eligibility as collateral in repurchase agreements with the RBA. These loan-level data are provided monthly, and are both timely and granular. The data provide detailed information about each loan that can be used to help form a view of financial health among mortgagors. As lenders can face incentives to select certain types of loans for securitisation or ensure the performance of loans after issuance, the data may not be fully representative of all mortgages in the Australian market. In other words, the loans are hand-picked for securitisation.

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Author: Martin North

Martin North is the Principal of Digital Finance Analytics

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