Mortgage markets: Australia (and NZ) vs the US

Following today’s terrible house price figures (I don’t have to see them to know they would be bad 😛 ) I thought it would be appropriate to go back to the comparison of NZ (and Aussie) to the US – at least for housing.

Greg Mankiw links to an article in the Wall Street Journal.  Read this:

When Australians borrow money to buy a house, they know that if they default and the mortgaged property doesn’t cover the debt, they will be responsible for the shortfall. And the lender will chase them for it. It’s a neat way of reminding Australians to borrow responsibly.

In America, where populist post-Depression laws in many states have mandated loans be nonrecourse, the opposite is true. Americans can take out a mortgage more or less as a one-way bet. If you can’t afford the repayments and can’t refinance, you just send the keys back to the bank. Borrowers wipe their hands of liability.

Surely hearing how moronic lending practices are in the US makes us all feel better about the relative outlook for our banking and housing sectors.  Although I bet to spite me that a major Aussie bank has gone bankrupt while I’ve been out of the country 😉 (again this was written on Sunday Nov 2)

9 replies
  1. Dismal Soyanz
    Dismal Soyanz says:

    Jingle mail is one of the contributory factors to the US meltdown.

    No Aussie bank has gone belly up altho ABC Learning is doing its best to sink CBA.

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  1. […] (as lenders and households actually do face the risk associated with there decisions, unlike the US […]

  2. […] poor nature of savings in the US, and the fact that there is no individual responsibility in the housing market or even in the realm of taxes (every third ad is either about getting a lawyer to lower your taxes […]

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