How lenders are curtailing their high density apartment block lending

Non-major lender CUA has amended its lending policies to make it easier for people to access finance for apartment purchases, with the changes targeted at the owner-occupied unit market.

On the whole, these changes are designed to help more apartment buyers to qualify for a CUA home loan, CUA general manager of sales, Andy Rigg advised.

“Some of the changes are also designed to manage the risks from forecasts of an apartment oversupply in some Australian cities in the coming two years,” Rigg said.

The changes include CUA changing its definition for what it considers to be high density apartments.

Last week CUA issued a media release to correct mis-reporting of changes to its apartment loan criteria in Fairfax Media publications. 

The mutual said it had not introduced a policy of not lending for the purchase of apartments of less than 40 square metres.

It indicated that it had been its long-standing policy. 

It did recently amend its definition of a "high density apartment" to apply to buildings with six or more floors or more than 50 apartments.

It had previously classified a high density apartment as one in a complex with four floors or more than 30 apartments.