By Robert Carry
The size of the deposit homebuyers are required to put down when buying a property should be regulated in order to stave off price bubbles, a Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) official has said.
RBA assistant governor Guy Debelle said yesterday that minimum deposit amounts had been introduced in places such as Hong Kong in a bid to prevent cool rising costs amid spiralling speculation.
"At the moment... Singapore and Hong Kong are concerned about what's going on in property prices; they're changing maximum LVRs," said Debelle yesterday.
If adopted by the government, the move would be a further blow to investors already struggling with tightened credit conditions imposed by financial institutions in the wake of the global financial crisis.
