RBA keeps interest rates at 3.0 percent as Australia Economy looks solid for recovery.

Australian home owners, home buyers, new home builders and retailers and mortgage lenders appears to have escaped the recession that has swept the World, with the Reserve Bank of Australia deciding to leave interest rates unchanged at 3 per cent, when the board met today at its June Meeting.
The decision to keep interest rates at its 45-year low is good news for the housing industry, home buyers and mortgage lenders and was widely tipped by economists.
Economists believe that the Reserve Bank is right in keeping its powder dry, in case further interest rates cuts are necessary who towards the end of the year, if in fact they are needed.
In a statement released this afternoon, Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens said there was evidence emerging the global economy is stabilising.
Australia's economy looking good.
"The turnaround is clearest in China and some other emerging countries," he said.
"Recovery in the major countries is likely to take longer to begin and be slower when it does occur."
Mr Stevens said although the effect of low mortgage rates was yet to be seen, future rate cuts were possible if the economy continued to deteriorate.
"The prospect of inflation declining over the medium term suggests that scope remains for some further easing of monetary policy, if needed."
The Reserve Bank cut the official cash rate by 25 basis points in April ending 425 basis points worth of reductions since September.
The central bank has since indicated it is in no rush to lower rates further as it assesses the impact of its easier monetary policy stance and the Federal Government's stimulus packages.
The stimulus packages have worked their magic and have lifted the retail industry, with figures out yesterday showing consumers spending a record $19.4 billion shopping in April.

One in five mortgage applicants is now a first home buyer in the UK

UK first home buyers had vanished from the property market when the credit crisis began, but have come out of the woodwork and now account for 20 percent of mortgage applications at one of Britain's biggest brokers.
In Australia the figures went from one in six and is now one in four home buyers that are first time home buyers. The difference is largely due to the First Home Owners Grant Boost that exists in Australia.
According to John Charcol, 21percent of purchasers using the broker in April were first-time buyers. The figure dropped as low as 4.1 percent in October last year.
The John Charcol Index, the broker's monthly mortgage activity monitor, revealed a sharp increase in the proportion of purchases made by first-time buyers in the first four months of this year, with that proportion being three and a half times higher than in the previous four months.

The return of significantly more first-time buyers in to the market this
year, despite the lack of low-deposit mortgages, is one of the best indicators
of confidence we've got at the moment

"A surprising number of first-time buyers have managed to find deposits of at least 25 percent in order to access a wider choice of mortgages and get a cheaper deal." Many were borrowing money from their parents to raise the deposits required by lenders, he added.
The broker also reported that fixed-rate mortgages now accounted for 82 percent of its customers' applications.
It said: "The proportion of applications for fixed-rate mortgages continued to climb in the last month, from 81percent in March to 82 percent of all business written by John Charcol in April. "This number is over 70 percent higher than the proportion of fixed-rate applications in January, when it stood at 48 percent."