Interest-only loans could be 'Australia's sub-prime'

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In a proprietary study of the nation's record high-and-growing household debt mountain, the Melbourne-based fund said Irish-style housing losses for the bigger-than-recognised pool of riskier borrowers could wipe out half of the banks' equity capital.

Interest-only loans, said JCP -- which is one of three Australian equities managers appointed by the Future Fund -- could be "Australia's sub-prime".

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Among the biggest concerns is what may happen when households feel they can no longer service their loans, for instance, as borrowing costs are reset higher or those with interest only mortgages are forced to repay the principal as well.

That creates a negative feedback loop -- experienced by Ireland after the financial crisis -- in which stressed borrowers slash their spending, in turn crunching the economy, driving up unemployment and adding to downward pressure on house prices.

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The fund's senior researchers Matthew Wilson and Craig Shephard found that about half of all the nation's mortgage debt was in the hands of borrowers whose debt was more than four times larger than their gross income.

The same borrowers had paid off less than half of their loans, the team found, based on data from several official and private sector sources that adjusted for changes in incomes and the collateral values of their homes.

The average loan-to-income ratio of these heavily indebted households was 6.4, or more than double the old banking "rule of thumb" that mortgage managers didn't lend more than three times a household's income "unless they were doctors".

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JCP calculated how the banks' balance sheets would handle an 2008 Irish-style loss on the high risk loans. It estimated that 50 per cent of the equity of Australian banks would be destroyed by soured loans to these high-risk borrowers.