Australia’s mortgage default hotspots

Home owners in south-west Sydney are by far the most likely in the country to miss more than one mortgage payment, according to a new study by Fitch Ratings.

The Sydney suburb of Guildford topped the list, with 5.65% of mortgagees there missing more than one mortgage repayment. The NSW areas of Granville, Wetherill Park, Cessnock, Belmore, Greenacre and Punchbowl take up the next six spots on the list, all with payment default rates of between 4.63% and 4.91%.

While NSW is clearly the worst state for mortgage payment defaults, WA is by far the best. The worst ranking postcode in the west is the foothills suburb of High Wycombe, which came 23^rd on the list with a payment default rate of 2.13%

“This report, for the first time, confirms the anecdotal evidence that south-west Sydney is the most stressed part of the country in terms of residential mortgages. In south-west Sydney, mortgages that have missed more than one payment at 30 September were almost twice that of the national average,” Fitch managing director Ben McCarthy says.

Fitch, an international credit rating agency, studied more than one million loans across Australia with payments outstanding totalling more than $168 million.