Larry Williams Drive

From today, strict loan affordability regulations are gone from the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, henceforth known as the CCCFA. This ends the bizarre inquisitions into your personal life the banks indulged in before denying you a loan. This is good news for first home buyers, obviously, but the people most affected were those trying to get smaller loans. The grilling you got to get that $5,000 you needed to fix a leak hopefully is over. The loan to value ratio rules have also eased, so again, good news for the first home buyers and investors. So how green are these green shoots in the housing market? Well, one report says that - 'home ownership for typical first home buyers has gone from being solidly in unaffordable territory at the start of the year to just marginally unaffordable in June'. Happy days- but still tough. Meanwhile, it turns out that first home buyers are increasingly buying townhouses. Townhouses made up just 6 percent of all new dwelling consents in 2012, now they account for 4