Academic literature on the topic 'Mortgages Australia'

PurposeHomeownership has been the main focus of housing policies in most countries. Typical means that households use to achieve homeownership is to take out a loan and supplement this with accumulated wealth for a downpayment. This paper aims to analyze the mortgage demand behavior of households in the UK, Australia and Japan.Design/methodology/approachUsing three panel data sets, HILDA for Australia, KHPS for Japan and USS for the UK, the paper estimates three equations using ordinary least squares: mortgage demand function, housing demand function and initial loan to value ratio function.FindingsThough homeownership is a preferred tenure and the mortgages are “recourse” loans, housing markets in these three countries operate in different mortgage market institutional structures. Results indicate that income elasticity of mortgage demand differ despite income elasticity of housing demand being similar. Different mortgage institutions in countries that pose constraints for borrowers also determine mortgage demand. Other factors such as demography and economic conditions have also played an important role in determining mortgage and housing demand.Originality/valueThe paper is first, to the authors’ knowledge, that explores the role of institutions in mortgage demand in a comparative framework for the UK, Japan and Australia.

Five years ago the global financial crisis threatened the world's financial system and its aftermath wreaked devastation across many parts of the globe. Mis-selling of home mortgages to consumers unable to repay their loans and global sales of financial products linked to residential lending were at the heart of the crisis. Financial reforms governing housing credit frameworks and the selling of complex financial products have ensued within domestic and international spheres. This article reviews the regulatory structures in Australia governing the provision of residential housing mortgages and credit assistance and the provision of financial advice. Its analysis focuses on customer suitability processes, client duties, and remuneration provisions because these legal features significantly influence, and can adversely impact, consumer outcomes. It suggests specific reforms to ensure adequate consumer protection and enhance the consistency and efficacy of the credit framework. It also calls for renewed debate on the remuneration structures of mortgage brokers.

In this paper, we examine the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) on the interest rate pass-through for four types of loans in Australia: mortgages, residentially secured small business lending, nonsecured small business lending and personal loans. Australia is an interesting case study since its central bank lowered but also raised interest rates during the GFC. We find that after the onset of the crisis, there has been a shift in the way banks adjust their lending rates in response to changes in market interest rates; the markup has increased and there has been a drop in both short- and long-term pass-through from funding costs to lending rates. Closer analysis indicates that the drop in short-term pass-through is due to the slower response of banks to increases in funding costs. We also find asymmetries in the way banks adjust lending rates in relation to funding costs in the long-run for nonsecured small business lending and personal loans. The evidence shows that banks in Australia tightened lending standards and competed less aggressively for loans but more for deposits in response to heightened default risks following the global financial crisis. The wider margin allows banks to adjust their lending rates more slowly and asymmetrically.

A cavaranserai was an inn where travelling Muslim merchants would gatherat night to relax after a hard day’s journey, share meals, and tell stories toeach other. These themes of travelling and storytelling set the scene forHanifa Deen’s wonderful book about these people, who, originally travellersthemselves, arrived on the continent around the eighteenth century.Moreover, the book is a story of Deen’s journey around Australia to collectthe stories of her fellow Muslim compatriots.Caravanserai was originally published in 1995. The impetus behindthe book was Deen’s sense during the first Gulf War (1991) that Muslimsin Australia did not have a human face – they were known by the generalpublic only through negative stereotypes. She sought to tell some of theirstories to show that Muslims, just like any other group, were human beings who “mow their lawns, are preoccupied with losing weight, worryabout their jobs and mortgages, play sport, swap jokes or tell their childrenbedtime stories” (p. 8). She set out across Australia to collect theirstories.At the time, Deen found that Muslims were making their way inAustralia, becoming more accepted by the wider community and establishedas one of many others in Australia’s multiethnic, multireligious society.The 9/11 tragedy changed all that, and Muslims in Australia, as in otherwestern countries, found themselves treated as “enemy aliens.” Believingthat the clock had been set back, the author felt an urgent need to retraceher steps to find out how her country’s Muslim communities were faring.The result of the second journey appears as part 4, and its three long chaptersmake up nearly one-third of the book.Deen writes that she was asked time and again what kind of book shewas writing and, surprisingly, found that answering this question wasrather difficult. As she travelled, met people, and collected their stories, thestyle of Caravanserai emerged: part storytelling and part commentary.This combination has served her well, for her renditions of her interviewees’stories are beautifully written. She describes the people she meets, thescene and ambiance of their meeting, and her thoughts and emotions as sheretells their stories. She writes so well that I often felt that I was in theroom with her, interacting with the people around her. This was all themore poignant for me, since I am an Australian from Perth, like her, butwho became Muslim only after emigrating to Canada. Deen’s stories connectedme with the Muslim community in Australia that I have neverknown ...

This study first uses the non-linear co-integration with structural breaks by Gregory and Hansen (1996) to examine whether non-linear co-integration exists between real estate investment trusts (REITs) and corresponding stock markets in the United States and Australia. Second, we employ the smooth transition vector-error correction model (STVECM) including the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model to separately explore the adjustment efficiencies of non-linear short-run REIT and corresponding stock return dynamics, as well as respective REIT return dynamics when the long-run disequilibrium occurs. The results show that a structural break co-integration exists between the equity and mortgage REITs and stock markets in the US, between the REITs and stock markets in the Australia and between the REIT markets in both the US and Australia. When there are large positive and negative deviations of STVECM, the adjustment speed of reverting to equilibrium of the S&P 500 index is greater than that of the Mortgage REIT index. However, when there are large positive (negative) deviations of STVECM, the adjustment speed of reverting to equilibrium of the Australian REIT (stock) index is greater, and that of the Australian REIT (US REIT) index is greater. In addition, by using a non-linear Granger causality test by Hiemstra and Jones (1994), we find that credit price effects exist between the US for each type of REIT and stock markets regardless of large positive or negative deviations (or returns) in STVECM (or STVAR). However, there is a feedback effect exists between the REITs and the stock markets in Australia.

The test of a well-functioning housing system is the wellbeing of its occupants. It may therefore seem encouraging that in jurisdictions dominated by mortgage-backed home ownership, owner-occupiers traditionally report better physical and mental health than renters. During the 2000s, however, in an era of financial crisis, wellbeing at the edges of ownership came under strain. Using data from two national panel surveys – the survey of Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia, and the British Household Panel Survey (with its successor, Understanding Society) – we track the wellbeing of households who sustained one or more spells of home ownership in the decade to 2010. We estimate log-log regression models of mental wellbeing for each country, documenting (with an appropriate range of controls) the effects of both tenure transitions (between ownership and renting) and some associated financial transactions (anchored on mortgage debt). We find: a wellbeing premium associated with outright ownership and a debt-effect among mortgagors; a wellbeing deficit among those who drop out of owner-occupation, with partial recovery where exit is enduring; and for leavers especially, a wellbeing cost to equity borrowing. Cross-national differences have an institutional explanation, but similarities relating to the character and regulation of mortgage markets are more striking.

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia (2006) the increased supply of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS), with a range of subordination, has broadened the investor base in real estate debt markets and reduced the commercial property sector’s dependence on bank financing The CMBS market has been one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing sectors in the capital markets, for a market which was virtually nonexistent prior to 1990. The global CMBS market issuance which stood at AU$5.1 billion (US$4 billion) in 1990 had grown to AU$380 billion (US$299 billion) by the end of 2006. In Australia, a total of over 60 CMBSs with nearly 180 tranches totalling over AU$17.4 billion had been issued to December 2006 from when they were first introduced in 1999. To date few studies have been done on Australian CMBSs outside the credit rating agency circles. These studies are predominantly practitioner focused (Jones Lang LaSalle 2001; Richardson 2003; Roche 2000, 2002). O’Sullivan (1998) and Simonovski (2003) are the only academic studies on CMBSs. As such, this thesis examines issues relating to the development of Australian CMBSs and quantitatively and qualitatively analyses the structuring of Australian CMBSs. In assessing the growth of the Australian CMBS market, an interpretive historical approach (Baumgarter & Hensley 2005) is adopted to provide a cogent review and explanation of features of international and Australian CMBSs. This helps to understand the changing nature of the market and provides better understanding of the present and suggests possible future directions. The Australian CMBS market is matured in comparison with the larger US and EU CMBS markets as seen by the diversity of asset classes backing the issues and transaction types, tightening spreads, and record issuance volumes.High property market transparency (Jones Lang LaSalle 2006b) and predominance of Listed Property Trusts (LPT) as CMBS issuers (Standard & Poor’s 2005b), who legally have to report their activities and underlying collateral performance to regulatory regimes such as Australian Stock Exchange (ASX)/Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and their equity partners, have contributed to the success of the Australian CMBS market. Furthermore, the positive commercial real estate market outlook should support future CMBS issuance, with LPTs continuing their dominance as issuers. In investigating property risk assessment in Australian CMBSs, all the CMBSs issued over a six year period of 2000 to 2005 were obtained from Standard and Poor’s presale reports as found in their Ratings Direct database to identify and review how property risk factors were addressed in all issues and within specific property asset classes following the delineation of property risk by Adair and Hutchinson (2005). Adequate assessment of property risk and its reporting is critical to the success of CMBS issues. The proposed framework shows that assessing and reporting property risk in Australian CMBSs, which are primarily backed by direct property assets, under the headings of investment quality risk, covenant strength risk, and depreciation and obsolescence risk can easily be done. The proposed framework should prove useful to rating agencies, bond issuers and institutional investors. Rating agencies can adopt a more systematic and consistent approach towards reporting of assessed property risk in CMBSs. Issuers and institutional investors can examine the perceived consistency and appropriateness of the rating assigned to a CMBS issue by providing inferences concerning property risk assessment.The ultimate goal of structuring CMBS transactions is to obtain a high credit rating as this has an impact on the yield obtainable and the success of the issue. The credit rating process involves highly subjective assessment of both qualitative and quantitative factors of a particular company as well as pertinent industry level or market level variables (Huang et al. 2004), with the final rating assigned by a credit committee via voting (Kwon et al. 1997). As such, credit rating agencies state that researchers cannot replicate their ratings quantitatively since their ratings reflect each agency’s opinion about an issue’s potential default risk and relies heavily on a committee’s analysis of the issuer’s ability and willingness to repay its debt. However, researchers have replicated bond ratings on the premise that financial ratios contain a large amount of information about a company’s credit risk. In this study, quantitative analysis of determinants of CMBS credit ratings issued by Standard and Poor’s from 2000 – 2006 using ANNs and OR and qualitative analysis of factors considered necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue through mail surveys of arrangers and issuers are undertaken. Of the quantitative variables propagated by credit rating agencies as being important to CMBS rating, only loan-to-value ratio (LTV) is found to be statistically significant, with the other variables being statistically insignificant using OR. This leads to the conclusion that statistical approaches used in corporate bond rating studies have limited replication capabilities in CMBS rating and that the endogeneity arguments raise significant questions about LTV and debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) as convenient, short-cut measures of CMBS default risk.However, ANNs do offer promising predictive results and can be used to facilitate implementation of survey-based CMBS rating systems. This should contribute to making the CMBS rating methodology become more explicit which is advantageous in that both CMBS investors and issuers are provided with greater information and faith in the investment. ANN results show that 62.0% of CMBS rating is attributable to LTV (38.2%) and DSCR (23.6%); supporting earlier studies which have listed the two as being the most important variables in CMBS rating. The other variables’ contributions are: CMBS issue size (10.1%), CMBS tenure (6.7%), geographical diversity (13.5%) and property diversity (7.9%) respectively. The methodology used to obtain these results is validated when applied to predict LPT bond ratings. Both OR and ANN produce provide robust alternatives to rating LPT bonds, with no significant differences in results between the full models of the two methods. Qualitative analysis of surveys on arrangers and issuers provides insights into structuring issues they consider necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue. Rating of issues was found to be the main reason why investors invest in CMBSs and provision of funds at attractive rates as the main motivation behind CMBS issuance. Furthermore, asset quality was found to be the most important factor necessary to obtain a high credit rating supporting the view by Henderson and ING Barings (1997) that assets backing securitisation are its fundamental credit strength.In addition, analyses of the surveys reveal the following: • The choice of which debt funding option to use depends on market conditions. • Credit tranching, over-collateralisation and cross-collateralisation are the main forms of credit enhancement in use. • On average, the AAA note tranche needs to be above AU$100 million and have 60 - 85% subordination for the CMBS issue to be economically viable. • Structuring costs range between 0.1% – 1% of issue size and structuring duration ranges from 4 – 9 months. • Preferred refinancing options are further capital market issues and bank debt. • Pricing CMBSs is greatly influenced by factors in the broader capital markets. For instance, the market had literary shut down as a result of the “credit crunch” caused by the meltdown in the US sub-prime mortgage market. These findings can be useful to issuers as a guide on the cost of going to the bond market to raise capital, which can be useful in comparing with other sources of funds. The findings of this thesis address crucial research priorities of the property industry as CMBSs are seen as a major commercial real estate debt instrument. By looking at how property risk can be assessed and reported in a more systematic way, and investigating quantitative and qualitative factors considered in structuring CMBSs, investor confidence can be increased through the increased body of knowledge. Several published refereed journal articles in Appendix C further validate the stature and significance of this thesis. It is evident that the property research in this thesis can lead aid in the revitalisation of the Australian CMBS market after the “shut down” caused by the melt-down in the US sub-prime mortgage market and can also be used to set up property-backed CMBSs in emerging countries where the CMBS market is immature or non-existent.

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia (2006) the increased supply of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS), with a range of subordination, has broadened the investor base in real estate debt markets and reduced the commercial property sector’s dependence on bank financing The CMBS market has been one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing sectors in the capital markets, for a market which was virtually nonexistent prior to 1990. The global CMBS market issuance which stood at AU$5.1 billion (US$4 billion) in 1990 had grown to AU$380 billion (US$299 billion) by the end of 2006. In Australia, a total of over 60 CMBSs with nearly 180 tranches totalling over AU$17.4 billion had been issued to December 2006 from when they were first introduced in 1999. To date few studies have been done on Australian CMBSs outside the credit rating agency circles. These studies are predominantly practitioner focused (Jones Lang LaSalle 2001; Richardson 2003; Roche 2000, 2002). O’Sullivan (1998) and Simonovski (2003) are the only academic studies on CMBSs. As such, this thesis examines issues relating to the development of Australian CMBSs and quantitatively and qualitatively analyses the structuring of Australian CMBSs. In assessing the growth of the Australian CMBS market, an interpretive historical approach (Baumgarter & Hensley 2005) is adopted to provide a cogent review and explanation of features of international and Australian CMBSs. This helps to understand the changing nature of the market and provides better understanding of the present and suggests possible future directions. The Australian CMBS market is matured in comparison with the larger US and EU CMBS markets as seen by the diversity of asset classes backing the issues and transaction types, tightening spreads, and record issuance volumes.
High property market transparency (Jones Lang LaSalle 2006b) and predominance of Listed Property Trusts (LPT) as CMBS issuers (Standard & Poor’s 2005b), who legally have to report their activities and underlying collateral performance to regulatory regimes such as Australian Stock Exchange (ASX)/Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and their equity partners, have contributed to the success of the Australian CMBS market. Furthermore, the positive commercial real estate market outlook should support future CMBS issuance, with LPTs continuing their dominance as issuers. In investigating property risk assessment in Australian CMBSs, all the CMBSs issued over a six year period of 2000 to 2005 were obtained from Standard and Poor’s presale reports as found in their Ratings Direct database to identify and review how property risk factors were addressed in all issues and within specific property asset classes following the delineation of property risk by Adair and Hutchinson (2005). Adequate assessment of property risk and its reporting is critical to the success of CMBS issues. The proposed framework shows that assessing and reporting property risk in Australian CMBSs, which are primarily backed by direct property assets, under the headings of investment quality risk, covenant strength risk, and depreciation and obsolescence risk can easily be done. The proposed framework should prove useful to rating agencies, bond issuers and institutional investors. Rating agencies can adopt a more systematic and consistent approach towards reporting of assessed property risk in CMBSs. Issuers and institutional investors can examine the perceived consistency and appropriateness of the rating assigned to a CMBS issue by providing inferences concerning property risk assessment.
The ultimate goal of structuring CMBS transactions is to obtain a high credit rating as this has an impact on the yield obtainable and the success of the issue. The credit rating process involves highly subjective assessment of both qualitative and quantitative factors of a particular company as well as pertinent industry level or market level variables (Huang et al. 2004), with the final rating assigned by a credit committee via voting (Kwon et al. 1997). As such, credit rating agencies state that researchers cannot replicate their ratings quantitatively since their ratings reflect each agency’s opinion about an issue’s potential default risk and relies heavily on a committee’s analysis of the issuer’s ability and willingness to repay its debt. However, researchers have replicated bond ratings on the premise that financial ratios contain a large amount of information about a company’s credit risk. In this study, quantitative analysis of determinants of CMBS credit ratings issued by Standard and Poor’s from 2000 – 2006 using ANNs and OR and qualitative analysis of factors considered necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue through mail surveys of arrangers and issuers are undertaken. Of the quantitative variables propagated by credit rating agencies as being important to CMBS rating, only loan-to-value ratio (LTV) is found to be statistically significant, with the other variables being statistically insignificant using OR. This leads to the conclusion that statistical approaches used in corporate bond rating studies have limited replication capabilities in CMBS rating and that the endogeneity arguments raise significant questions about LTV and debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) as convenient, short-cut measures of CMBS default risk.
However, ANNs do offer promising predictive results and can be used to facilitate implementation of survey-based CMBS rating systems. This should contribute to making the CMBS rating methodology become more explicit which is advantageous in that both CMBS investors and issuers are provided with greater information and faith in the investment. ANN results show that 62.0% of CMBS rating is attributable to LTV (38.2%) and DSCR (23.6%); supporting earlier studies which have listed the two as being the most important variables in CMBS rating. The other variables’ contributions are: CMBS issue size (10.1%), CMBS tenure (6.7%), geographical diversity (13.5%) and property diversity (7.9%) respectively. The methodology used to obtain these results is validated when applied to predict LPT bond ratings. Both OR and ANN produce provide robust alternatives to rating LPT bonds, with no significant differences in results between the full models of the two methods. Qualitative analysis of surveys on arrangers and issuers provides insights into structuring issues they consider necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue. Rating of issues was found to be the main reason why investors invest in CMBSs and provision of funds at attractive rates as the main motivation behind CMBS issuance. Furthermore, asset quality was found to be the most important factor necessary to obtain a high credit rating supporting the view by Henderson and ING Barings (1997) that assets backing securitisation are its fundamental credit strength.
In addition, analyses of the surveys reveal the following: • The choice of which debt funding option to use depends on market conditions. • Credit tranching, over-collateralisation and cross-collateralisation are the main forms of credit enhancement in use. • On average, the AAA note tranche needs to be above AU$100 million and have 60 - 85% subordination for the CMBS issue to be economically viable. • Structuring costs range between 0.1% – 1% of issue size and structuring duration ranges from 4 – 9 months. • Preferred refinancing options are further capital market issues and bank debt. • Pricing CMBSs is greatly influenced by factors in the broader capital markets. For instance, the market had literary shut down as a result of the “credit crunch” caused by the meltdown in the US sub-prime mortgage market. These findings can be useful to issuers as a guide on the cost of going to the bond market to raise capital, which can be useful in comparing with other sources of funds. The findings of this thesis address crucial research priorities of the property industry as CMBSs are seen as a major commercial real estate debt instrument. By looking at how property risk can be assessed and reported in a more systematic way, and investigating quantitative and qualitative factors considered in structuring CMBSs, investor confidence can be increased through the increased body of knowledge. Several published refereed journal articles in Appendix C further validate the stature and significance of this thesis. It is evident that the property research in this thesis can lead aid in the revitalisation of the Australian CMBS market after the “shut down” caused by the melt-down in the US sub-prime mortgage market and can also be used to set up property-backed CMBSs in emerging countries where the CMBS market is immature or non-existent.

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia (2006) the increased supply of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS), with a range of subordination, has broadened the investor base in real estate debt markets and reduced the commercial property sector’s dependence on bank financing The CMBS market has been one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing sectors in the capital markets, for a market which was virtually nonexistent prior to 1990. The global CMBS market issuance which stood at AU$5.1 billion (US$4 billion) in 1990 had grown to AU$380 billion (US$299 billion) by the end of 2006. In Australia, a total of over 60 CMBSs with nearly 180 tranches totalling over AU$17.4 billion had been issued to December 2006 from when they were first introduced in 1999. To date few studies have been done on Australian CMBSs outside the credit rating agency circles. These studies are predominantly practitioner focused (Jones Lang LaSalle 2001; Richardson 2003; Roche 2000, 2002). O’Sullivan (1998) and Simonovski (2003) are the only academic studies on CMBSs. As such, this thesis examines issues relating to the development of Australian CMBSs and quantitatively and qualitatively analyses the structuring of Australian CMBSs. In assessing the growth of the Australian CMBS market, an interpretive historical approach (Baumgarter & Hensley 2005) is adopted to provide a cogent review and explanation of features of international and Australian CMBSs. This helps to understand the changing nature of the market and provides better understanding of the present and suggests possible future directions. The Australian CMBS market is matured in comparison with the larger US and EU CMBS markets as seen by the diversity of asset classes backing the issues and transaction types, tightening spreads, and record issuance volumes. High property market transparency (Jones Lang LaSalle 2006b) and predominance of Listed Property Trusts (LPT) as CMBS issuers (Standard & Poor’s 2005b), who legally have to report their activities and underlying collateral performance to regulatory regimes such as Australian Stock Exchange (ASX)/Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and their equity partners, have contributed to the success of the Australian CMBS market. Furthermore, the positive commercial real estate market outlook should support future CMBS issuance, with LPTs continuing their dominance as issuers. In investigating property risk assessment in Australian CMBSs, all the CMBSs issued over a six year period of 2000 to 2005 were obtained from Standard and Poor’s presale reports as found in their Ratings Direct database to identify and review how property risk factors were addressed in all issues and within specific property asset classes following the delineation of property risk by Adair and Hutchinson (2005). Adequate assessment of property risk and its reporting is critical to the success of CMBS issues. The proposed framework shows that assessing and reporting property risk in Australian CMBSs, which are primarily backed by direct property assets, under the headings of investment quality risk, covenant strength risk, and depreciation and obsolescence risk can easily be done. The proposed framework should prove useful to rating agencies, bond issuers and institutional investors. Rating agencies can adopt a more systematic and consistent approach towards reporting of assessed property risk in CMBSs. Issuers and institutional investors can examine the perceived consistency and appropriateness of the rating assigned to a CMBS issue by providing inferences concerning property risk assessment. High property market transparency (Jones Lang LaSalle 2006b) and predominance of Listed Property Trusts (LPT) as CMBS issuers (Standard & Poor’s 2005b), who legally have to report their activities and underlying collateral performance to regulatory regimes such as Australian Stock Exchange (ASX)/Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and their equity partners, have contributed to the success of the Australian CMBS market. Furthermore, the positive commercial real estate market outlook should support future CMBS issuance, with LPTs continuing their dominance as issuers. In investigating property risk assessment in Australian CMBSs, all the CMBSs issued over a six year period of 2000 to 2005 were obtained from Standard and Poor’s presale reports as found in their Ratings Direct database to identify and review how property risk factors were addressed in all issues and within specific property asset classes following the delineation of property risk by Adair and Hutchinson (2005). Adequate assessment of property risk and its reporting is critical to the success of CMBS issues. The proposed framework shows that assessing and reporting property risk in Australian CMBSs, which are primarily backed by direct property assets, under the headings of investment quality risk, covenant strength risk, and depreciation and obsolescence risk can easily be done. The proposed framework should prove useful to rating agencies, bond issuers and institutional investors. Rating agencies can adopt a more systematic and consistent approach towards reporting of assessed property risk in CMBSs. Issuers and institutional investors can examine the perceived consistency and appropriateness of the rating assigned to a CMBS issue by providing inferences concerning property risk assessment. The ultimate goal of structuring CMBS transactions is to obtain a high credit rating as this has an impact on the yield obtainable and the success of the issue. The credit rating process involves highly subjective assessment of both qualitative and quantitative factors of a particular company as well as pertinent industry level or market level variables (Huang et al. 2004), with the final rating assigned by a credit committee via voting (Kwon et al. 1997). As such, credit rating agencies state that researchers cannot replicate their ratings quantitatively since their ratings reflect each agency’s opinion about an issue’s potential default risk and relies heavily on a committee’s analysis of the issuer’s ability and willingness to repay its debt. However, researchers have replicated bond ratings on the premise that financial ratios contain a large amount of information about a company’s credit risk. In this study, quantitative analysis of determinants of CMBS credit ratings issued by Standard and Poor’s from 2000 – 2006 using ANNs and OR and qualitative analysis of factors considered necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue through mail surveys of arrangers and issuers are undertaken. Of the quantitative variables propagated by credit rating agencies as being important to CMBS rating, only loan-to-value ratio (LTV) is found to be statistically significant, with the other variables being statistically insignificant using OR. This leads to the conclusion that statistical approaches used in corporate bond rating studies have limited replication capabilities in CMBS rating and that the endogeneity arguments raise significant questions about LTV and debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) as convenient, short-cut measures of CMBS default risk. The ultimate goal of structuring CMBS transactions is to obtain a high credit rating as this has an impact on the yield obtainable and the success of the issue. The credit rating process involves highly subjective assessment of both qualitative and quantitative factors of a particular company as well as pertinent industry level or market level variables (Huang et al. 2004), with the final rating assigned by a credit committee via voting (Kwon et al. 1997). As such, credit rating agencies state that researchers cannot replicate their ratings quantitatively since their ratings reflect each agency’s opinion about an issue’s potential default risk and relies heavily on a committee’s analysis of the issuer’s ability and willingness to repay its debt. However, researchers have replicated bond ratings on the premise that financial ratios contain a large amount of information about a company’s credit risk. In this study, quantitative analysis of determinants of CMBS credit ratings issued by Standard and Poor’s from 2000 – 2006 using ANNs and OR and qualitative analysis of factors considered necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue through mail surveys of arrangers and issuers are undertaken. Of the quantitative variables propagated by credit rating agencies as being important to CMBS rating, only loan-to-value ratio (LTV) is found to be statistically significant, with the other variables being statistically insignificant using OR. This leads to the conclusion that statistical approaches used in corporate bond rating studies have limited replication capabilities in CMBS rating and that the endogeneity arguments raise significant questions about LTV and debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) as convenient, short-cut measures of CMBS default risk. However, ANNs do offer promising predictive results and can be used to facilitate implementation of survey-based CMBS rating systems. This should contribute to making the CMBS rating methodology become more explicit which is advantageous in that both CMBS investors and issuers are provided with greater information and faith in the investment. ANN results show that 62.0% of CMBS rating is attributable to LTV (38.2%) and DSCR (23.6%); supporting earlier studies which have listed the two as being the most important variables in CMBS rating. The other variables’ contributions are: CMBS issue size (10.1%), CMBS tenure (6.7%), geographical diversity (13.5%) and property diversity (7.9%) respectively. The methodology used to obtain these results is validated when applied to predict LPT bond ratings. Both OR and ANN produce provide robust alternatives to rating LPT bonds, with no significant differences in results between the full models of the two methods. Qualitative analysis of surveys on arrangers and issuers provides insights into structuring issues they consider necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue. Rating of issues was found to be the main reason why investors invest in CMBSs and provision of funds at attractive rates as the main motivation behind CMBS issuance. Furthermore, asset quality was found to be the most important factor necessary to obtain a high credit rating supporting the view by Henderson and ING Barings (1997) that assets backing securitisation are its fundamental credit strength. However, ANNs do offer promising predictive results and can be used to facilitate implementation of survey-based CMBS rating systems. This should contribute to making the CMBS rating methodology become more explicit which is advantageous in that both CMBS investors and issuers are provided with greater information and faith in the investment. ANN results show that 62.0% of CMBS rating is attributable to LTV (38.2%) and DSCR (23.6%); supporting earlier studies which have listed the two as being the most important variables in CMBS rating. The other variables’ contributions are: CMBS issue size (10.1%), CMBS tenure (6.7%), geographical diversity (13.5%) and property diversity (7.9%) respectively. The methodology used to obtain these results is validated when applied to predict LPT bond ratings. Both OR and ANN produce provide robust alternatives to rating LPT bonds, with no significant differences in results between the full models of the two methods. Qualitative analysis of surveys on arrangers and issuers provides insights into structuring issues they consider necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue. Rating of issues was found to be the main reason why investors invest in CMBSs and provision of funds at attractive rates as the main motivation behind CMBS issuance. Furthermore, asset quality was found to be the most important factor necessary to obtain a high credit rating supporting the view by Henderson and ING Barings (1997) that assets backing securitisation are its fundamental credit strength. In addition, analyses of the surveys reveal the following: • The choice of which debt funding option to use depends on market conditions. • Credit tranching, over-collateralisation and cross-collateralisation are the main forms of credit enhancement in use. • On average, the AAA note tranche needs to be above AU$100 million and have 60 - 85% subordination for the CMBS issue to be economically viable. • Structuring costs range between 0.1% – 1% of issue size and structuring duration ranges from 4 – 9 months. • Preferred refinancing options are further capital market issues and bank debt. • Pricing CMBSs is greatly influenced by factors in the broader capital markets. For instance, the market had literary shut down as a result of the “credit crunch” caused by the meltdown in the US sub-prime mortgage market. These findings can be useful to issuers as a guide on the cost of going to the bond market to raise capital, which can be useful in comparing with other sources of funds. The findings of this thesis address crucial research priorities of the property industry as CMBSs are seen as a major commercial real estate debt instrument. By looking at how property risk can be assessed and reported in a more systematic way, and investigating quantitative and qualitative factors considered in structuring CMBSs, investor confidence can be increased through the increased body of knowledge. Several published refereed journal articles in Appendix C further validate the stature and significance of this thesis. It is evident that the property research in this thesis can lead aid in the revitalisation of the Australian CMBS market after the “shut down” caused by the melt-down in the US sub-prime mortgage market and can also be used to set up property-backed CMBSs in emerging countries where the CMBS market is immature or non-existent. In addition, analyses of the surveys reveal the following: • The choice of which debt funding option to use depends on market conditions. • Credit tranching, over-collateralisation and cross-collateralisation are the main forms of credit enhancement in use. • On average, the AAA note tranche needs to be above AU$100 million and have 60 - 85% subordination for the CMBS issue to be economically viable. • Structuring costs range between 0.1% – 1% of issue size and structuring duration ranges from 4 – 9 months. • Preferred refinancing options are further capital market issues and bank debt. • Pricing CMBSs is greatly influenced by factors in the broader capital markets. For instance, the market had literary shut down as a result of the “credit crunch” caused by the meltdown in the US sub-prime mortgage market. These findings can be useful to issuers as a guide on the cost of going to the bond market to raise capital, which can be useful in comparing with other sources of funds. The findings of this thesis address crucial research priorities of the property industry as CMBSs are seen as a major commercial real estate debt instrument. By looking at how property risk can be assessed and reported in a more systematic way, and investigating quantitative and qualitative factors considered in structuring CMBSs, investor confidence can be increased through the increased body of knowledge. Several published refereed journal articles in Appendix C further validate the stature and significance of this thesis. It is evident that the property research in this thesis can lead aid in the revitalisation of the Australian CMBS market after the “shut down” caused by the melt-down in the US sub-prime mortgage market and can also be used to set up property-backed CMBSs in emerging countries where the CMBS market is immature or non-existent.

The thesis is primarily an empirical investigation of Australian mortgage loan prepayment from a modelling perspective. The first objective of the research is to develop a variable-rate loan prepayment model that takes into account the Australian mortgage market structure. The model proves very successful when tested empirically, and is able to explain the partial prepayment features of the Australian market as well as full prepayments. Secondly, Australian fixed-rate prepayment is investigated. Empirical tests are carried out on the non-linear Stanton model and a linear model using Australian prepayment data. Both models perform very well. Next a combined model is formed by combining the (fixed-rate) Stanton model with a variable-rate model. The combined model again proves very successful when empirically tested.

碩士
清雲科技大學
國際企業管理研究所
100
This study is aimed at analyzing the performance of six New Zealand and Australia funds sold in Taiwan, calculating their value at risk, and examining the impact of subprime mortgage crisis on the performance of the funds. The six funds - JF Australia (USD), Aberdeen Global Australasian Equity A2 (AUD), Parvest Equity Australia C (AUD), FF - Australia B (USD), Baring Australia A Class (USD) and the iShares MSCI Australia Index Fund - selected from Info Winner 2000 Database and TEJ Taiwan DB, are reviewed and further discussed. The average, the standard deviation, the β in the CAPM, and the Sharp Ratio are employed to compare the investment rates of return with the value at risk (VaR) for Australia and New Zealand funds before/during/after the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007. The absolute VaR- the relative VaR, the Historical Simulation, and the Monte Carlo Simulation are utilized as means of calculation. The results showed that, first, in the New Zealand and Australia markets, the maximum loss on investment

碩士
銘傳大學
財務金融學系碩士在職專班
97
This paper examines the impact, causation, and contagion effect of subprime crisis on the returns on the U.S., EMU, UK, Australian and Japanese bond indices. We employ VECM to test the level of impact, VAR to test the causation, and GJR-GARCH within a VAR framework to test the contagion effect of subprime crisis. Our empirical results show that the occurrence of subprime crisis markedly increased the returns on U.S. EMU, UK and Australian bond indices. In addition, the lead-lag relationship in sovereign bond index between countries that sustained heavier financial losses in the subprime crisis, such as the U.S., EMU and UK and countries that sustained less losses, such as Australia and Japan remained the same and the phenomenon of risk contagion existed. After the subprime crisis, the relationship between the U.S. bond index and the EMU and UK bond indices turned from lead-lag to synchronous and the phenomenon of risk contagion existed. This result indicates that the commandingly leading position of the U.S. bond market in the worldwide bond markets has wiggled. The simultaneous responses of the U.S., EMU and UK bond markets to the tremendous impact brought about by the subprime crisis have created significant domino effect on the financial markets in the rest of the world. A “everybody’s in the same boat” model seems to have taken shape for the central banks of the U.S., EMU and UK at the time of a major financial crisis that if they adopt consistent monetary policies, it will help them cope better with material market changes and build up a defense network against the contagion of systemic risk induced by a financial storm.

碩士
國立臺北大學
國際企業研究所
98
The financial system of the Taiwan stock market has integrated fast with other stock markets in recent years. This may also enlarge the high linkages effects between Taiwan and other international financial markets. Since Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia are located in Asia-Pacific area, there is an increase in bidirectional investment and trade from these four stock markets, which enhances the interactions among these four international markets. Also, the globalization of financial systems and the acceleration of information transmission have increased the risk of financial crises. Hence, the purpose of this thesis tries to investigate whether contagion effects exist, during the events of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Subprime Mortgage and Financial Tsunami Crisis, among these four stock markets. This thesis tries to establish the VEC-GJR DCC-GARCH model to prove the common volatility and volatility spillover effects among the stock markets of Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. The time for structural breaks in stock return volatility are detected first, based on the iterated cumulative sums of squares (ICSS) algorithm developed by Inclán and Tiao (1994), to identify the crisis period and to add dummies to avoid the overestimation of volatility. Then, time-varying correlation coefficients are estimated by the multivariate GARCH dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) model. In order to recognize the contagion effect, we test whether the DCC coefficients during the crisis period differs from that in the pre-crisis stable period. Empirical findings show that most of the stock markets demonstrate a significant increase of the mean correlation coefficients across countries after the crisis in comparison to periods before the crisis. The dynamic interactions among these stock markets are not just affected by volatility comovement but also by the contagion effect during the events as mentioned above occurred. These evidences suggest that domestic stock market investors need to consider financial impacts in neighborhood countries when making their investment decisions.