$70 or underby Friday close - wont c $80 for long time, page-9

"NEARLY half of all homeowners are now shackled to their mortgage, with refinance rejections up significantly cent in less than a year as banks rattled by the royal commission drastically tighten borrowing rules.

Loan sizes are being slashed by 30 per cent, trapping many financially stressed customers including some who have been slugged with “out of cycle” interest rate rises. House hunters are also being hit by the credit crunch, with dramatic implications for property markets. The crunch stems from two big shifts in the way banks judge borrowers.
Expense estimates have been raised substantially — the minimum outgoings for an average household are now assumed to be a third higher, according to bank analysts UBS.
On top of this, granular cost breakdowns must be provided. After the royal commission revealed in March that expense checks were so lax as to be borderline illegal, new tests have been imposed requiring in some cases detail of weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly and annual spending in as many as 37 categories from alcohol and haircare to shoes and pets, as well as doctor visits.


As a result, we think that now four in 10 households would now have difficulty refinancing.  That means you are basically a prisoner in the loan you’ve currently got. This is based on our 52,000 household surveys plus data from a range of official sources. We estimate that 31,000 households’ refinance applications were rejected in July versus 2,300 in August last year."