Banks back moves to cool house prices

ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott says it’s a “reasonably good idea” for regulators to dampen activity in the hot housing sector but notes little evidence of first-home buyers being widely shut out.

Mr Elliott noted regulators should give consideration to measures that would cool activity, given the rampant rise in house prices.

“It’s probably a reasonably good idea,” he said in a Monday radio interview. “Whenever markets move quickly up or down, it’s always a time for concern. And what we’re seeing is house prices accelerating quite strongly.”

Commonwealth Bank’s head of retail Angus Sullivan said the lender saw a case for very modest interventions to “help make sure that the market stabilises where it is”.

The Council of Financial Regulators recently tasked the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority to put together a framework of possible measures to address the hot housing market.

The latest CoreLogic data showed house prices had climbed 20.3 per cent over the past year.