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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: biometricgngboy who wrote (14021)	9/28/2003 11:16:04 AM
From: biometricgngboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Aussie Home Loans ignores bubble, beefs staff By Geoffrey Newman September 26, 2003 AUSSIE Home Loans, the country's biggest non-bank mortgage lender, no longer believes the housing market will crash and is backing its prediction by doubling the number of its in-house mortgage brokers. After warning of a potential bust in the property market last year, Aussie founder John Symonds now believes the market will slow without imploding, Aussie's director and human resources chief, Linda Harris, said yesterday. "Even if there's a bottoming out of the home loan market there is still going to be growth, we believe, in our area of the business - certainly enough to warrant putting on significantly extra sales people," Ms Harris said. Aussie has embarked on a national recruitment drive to lift the number of specialty mortgage advisers to 1000 from 450 over the next 12 months and will focus on boosting the number of women in its ranks. "Women as a general rule can do more than a lot of the males - they follow up with the customers, they really want to keep in contact," Ms Harris said. The practices of some operators in the mortgage broking industry have come under question during the property boom, with accusations of kickbacks and secret commissions. Ms Harris said in its case, Aussie had to terminate the contract of its most successful broker eight months ago for fraud, but was dismayed to find he immediately got a job with another company. Aussie said it would maintain high standards among its brokers, with its own training and accreditation program through the "Aussie Academy". It also does not allow its brokers to accept "incentives" from lenders, like free holidays. It is also calling for better regulation of the broking industry by Government. "If we get any indication that someone is conducting their business in any kind of way that is not ethical ... then we act very, very quickly on that," Ms Harris said. The company is seeking 80 new staff in Queensland and 100 new advisers in NSW in a bid to cope with the record lending volumes in the Australian housing market. In September last year, it launched the Aussie Mortgage Market to allow its brokers to sell other lenders' products as well as its own. Aussie said monthly loan volumes had tripled over the past year and were estimated to reach $800 million this month. The company has a loan portfolio of $11 billion with about 160,000 customers. finance.news.com.au