In short:

Banks will be told not to count HECS-HELP and other student loans in debt calculations for home loans, and to disregard HELP repayments from serviceability assessments.

APRA will also update lending rules for housing developers to clarify that a block of units does not need to be fully sold off the plan to qualify for a loan.

What's next?

The Coalition is mulling its own move on lending requirements, with a proposal soon to come before shadow cabinet.

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[–] MHLoppy@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

Maybe it's in reference to the sort of idea that I was talking about? That banks won't consider HECS-HELP as 'debt', only as effectively a higher tax rate, and that they shouldn't even take that into account if someone is only going to have that higher tax rate for a couple of years until the HECS-HELP is paid off, then it should be ignored entirely?

That would definitely make sense to me, but if that's what's actually happening then the reporting on it is a bit misleading imo since that's not "ignoring" or "disregard" it, just more accurately categorizing it 😅 I guess we might get more details on the specifics later!