Why Are Lenders Locking Out Chinese Buyers?

Slowly but surely we have seen every single last lender on our panel of twenty five lenders, restrict their lending to the non-resident market. Many have simply stopped lending to non-residents completely.

Historically we had lenders such as St George, with a dedicated non-resident lending cell, or Citibank who are a global lender who deal in foreign loans readily. 

The trigger for this avalanche of restrictions is a series of audits amongst lenders that has uncovered fraudulent Chinese income documents. ANZ banking group and Westpac Banking Corp found hundreds of home loans backed by fraudulent Chinese income documents. Allegedly these were manufactured with the help of dodgy mortgage brokers.

If I were to take the industry whispers at face value, this has been happening routinely. In May of this year Mortgage House has stated that it has declined foreign business, because according to their Chief Executive, Ken Sayer, “We did not want the grief. I knew this was coming. It was a no brainer,”
​
Our last remaining lender to accept non residents is Citibank. However, they will only allow non-resident applications from it’s 'gold' rated list of currencies. Further, the applicant must be in the country of that currency. Chinese Yuan is not on the list therefore residents of China need not apply.

We are no longer able to find a single lender on or off panel that will look at Chinese non-resident investors.

---