澳盛银行（ANZ）的执行长Mike Smith 提出，购房者应该留意房价会下跌的警告，他还出乎意料地表示，他对央行干预借贷行为的可能性并不担心。

自从澳联储（RBA）暗示了新的宏观审慎工具可能会用于冷却悉尼和墨市过热的房地产市场之后，这位四大银行之一的高管首次发表了公开的言论，Smith说，澳联储在保持经济增长和遏制房地产市场泡沫方面承担着“非常艰难的工作”。

购房者会认为房地产是一项没有风险的投资，任何行动只会被认为是出于“很好的理由”，但是银行已经明确表示这种想法是危险的。

Smith告诉《澳洲金融评论报》说，“如果有人相信房价会像过去几年一样继续上涨，那么澳联储已经说得很明白，这种情况不会再发生。”

周四，澳联储的助理主席 Malcolm Edey 拒绝透露澳联储和澳洲审慎监管局（APRA）正在考虑的具体措施细节，但似乎透露纽西兰式的贷款与估值限定措施已被排除在了考虑之外，并且央行会继续对非常具体的地区市场所采取的限制措施保持开放的心态。

Edey 说道，“我们正在讨论的措施工具需要非常有针对性，”这些措施不是要扼杀投资者市场而是要避免市场失调，“市场应该按比例保持平衡。”

而 Smith 表示，他对澳联储或者 APRA 是否要实行这些措施一点都不感到担忧，“如果没有很好的理由，他们是不会实施的”。

他说，“我认为我们应该支持央行进行它正在努力做的事情，这是一项艰巨的任务，而且要维持市场平衡是极其困难的。”

Home lending curbs no worry for ANZ

PUBLISHED: 03 OCT 2014 05:08:18

UPDATED: 03 OCT 2014 05:08:39

《The Australian Financial Review》

BY JAMES EYERS

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group chief executive Mike Smith says home buyers should heed warnings that house prices can fall and has unexpectedly said he is not worried about the prospect of central bank intervention to curb lending.

In the first public comments by a big bank executive since the Reserve Bank of Australia fore shadowed new macro-prudential tools could beused to cool housing markets in Sydney and Melbourne, Mr Smith said the RBA had “a very difficult job” maintaining economic growth and taking the froth out of property markets.

But the central bank had been clear that it would bedangerous for buyers to consider property is an investment without risk and anyaction would only be taken for a “good reason”.

“If anybody believes that housing prices should continue the way they have the last few years, [the RBA] have been saying very clearly this is not going to happen,” Mr Smith told The Australian Financial Review.

“People just have to get it out of their minds that property always goes up.”

RBA assistant governor Malcolm Edey described the use of macro-prudential policy as good news for first-time buyers because they would help remove some speculative investors from out-gunning younger bidders.

“This should be good news for first home buyers,” Mr Edeytold a Senate hearing in Canberra on Thursday, where the central bank was grilled on the details of its proposed restrictions.

Mr Smith said increasing the cash rate to stunt house price growth was “a large lever to pull” and because it was “all encompassing” it could restrict economic growth. So “you can understand why they are looking atall options.”

Dr Edey declined to detail specific measures being considered by the RBA and Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, but appeared to rule out New Zealand-style loan-to-valuation caps, and kept open the prospect of restraints being applied to very specific geographic markets.

“The tools we are talking about need to be carefully targeted,” he said, and were not about killing the investor market but were about trying to avoid imbalances. “It has got to be proportionate,” Dr Edeysaid.

Mr Smith said he would not be worried if the RBA or APRA chose to implement such policies “because they wouldn’t do it without good reason”.

“I think we should be supporting the Reserve Bank in what it is trying to do,” he said. “It is a tough job and maintaining balance is extremely difficult.

“I have a huge sympathy for them. They will never get it right for everybody but if they have real concerns, they are best placed to deal with this.

“I would not presume to say what is necessary or not because I don’t have the full range of data and I am not managing the economy, just a bank. They will work through what are the best policy issues to respond to this if they feel housing prices have gone too hard.”

Official figures released on Thursday showed approvals in August for new apartments and townhouses surged by the most in seven months,with NSW and Victoria posting the biggest gains.

The central bank and APRA have become increasingly worried that a surge in house prices across parts of Sydney and Melbourne could turninto an unstable bubble. Their biggest concern is that any subsequent collapse would unleash an economy-wide slump in confidence.

The central bank’s head of financial stability, Luci Ellis,told the Senate committee she did not want to find out through experience what would happen to the economy if 1 per cent of households lost their homes in acollapse. The RBA’s Financial Stability Review last week said “the risk from the current strength in housing markets is more likely to be to future household spending than to lenders’ balance sheets”.

Mr Smith agreed that any assessment of macro-prudential tools had to recognise they were being deployed to deal with “a macro issue,not a prudential issue”.

ANZ deputy chief executive Graham Hodges said in ANZ’s mortgage book, just under half of borrowers were ahead of their scheduled repayments, because in Australia, “there is a culture of paying back your loansand it is the most tax effective thing you can do.” Full-recourse loans, thelack of any sub prime or low doc market and having no tax deductions forowner-occupied properties meant Australia had quite conservative policies that protected banks compared to other systems. “These things create a much stronger system than might be the case elsewhere.”

Addressing the outlook for interest rates, Mr Smith said itwas “inevitable you are going to get a rate rise – that’s how economic cycleswork – but right now, the question is, is the rest of the country preforming well enough to absorb that sort of increase?

“That comes back to the problem. [A rate rise] would take heat out of the housing market, but that would reduce consumer spending.”

“Anecdotally, the economy is probably in better shape than people realise but confidence has still not recovered.”

Dr Edey also downplayed the impact of negative gearing on the current price surge, saying the tax structures had been in place for a“long time,” and was therefore hard to blame for the surge.

Both Reserve Bank of Australia officials repeatedly denied the resort to macro-prudential tools meant they had pushed official rates too low, with Dr Edey saying the bank had been warning about potential market risksa year ago.

He said a preliminary announcement on the measures would be made before the end of the year.