A report from ABC News in Australia."A new crackdown on property lending has emerged in the wake of the Banking Royal Commission, with borrowers now being asked for deposits of up to 30 per cent and banks throwing greater scrutiny on location and living expenses when assessing loans."

"In addition, data obtained by the ABC shows the suburbs that lenders deem the most risky across Australia — a so-called 'blacklist' of areas where location is deemed more of a liability to people seeking a loan. In the new lending environment, one of the biggest shocks for borrowers is that the crackdown applies not just when accessing new credit, but also when refinancing existing loans."

"This comes as some households are being hit by a surge in repayments as interest-only loans expire, triggering the need to begin paying down the principal amount borrowed that can add hundreds of dollars to monthly repayments."

"Amanda Bearcroft said she was trying to sell a property on the Hawksbury River, north-west of Sydney, but the couple keen to buy her house were told they had to find a 35 per cent deposit. 'At first they were told it would be 30 per cent, then the banks finally came back and said it was 35 per cent right at the very end,' Ms. Bearcroft said."

"Ms Bearcroft was concerned she now would not be able to sell the property. 'The banks have just got too difficult to borrow money off,' she said. 'We're really going to need a cash buyer to come in and people don't have that cash just lying there. It's really difficult. Everybody that's come through and have been interested have been told they are required to pay 30 per cent.'"

"Experts say the two main challenges of lending are a borrower's equity position (the value of the property) and their availability to service the loan (how easily they can make repayments). If the property market is going well, then borrowers only have one challenge — meeting the loan repayments. But the situation worsens in a falling market."

"Perth homeowner Julia Ewert has been hit by the lending crackdown and said she felt the goalposts had suddenly moved. 'When I came to refinance … I was told in short there was nothing they could do anymore,' she said. 'My interest-only term had expired and they had to roll me over to principal and interest. I've always been able to roll over my interest-only term when that expires … and now they've said, 'You can't do that anymore.'"

"Ms Ewert said she and her husband could not afford the $900 jump in monthly repayments required under the new lending standards and had been forced to sell their investment property in Perth's south-east."

"'We've got two young children, a two-year-old and a four-year-old, so the stability is everything to us, it determines every decision we make as a family,' Ms Ewert said. 'This is not something I want to sell, I've had this property for 10 years. I'm selling because I have to.'"

"Ms Ewert's tale was becoming increasingly common across the country as homeowners struggled to pay their loans amid an environment of tumbling prices. 'Values are off 18 per cent in Sydney, which is an important number because that takes away 20 per cent growth on the way up in a market, property analyst Gavin Hegney said. 'So for those buyers, they are now probably in negative equity situations and are probably feeling a little bit uncomfortable.'"

"'We'd have to go back to the mid-1970s before we had the last credit squeeze in Australia,' he said. 'Although banking has been tight before, it's just been the drastic change — where it's gone from quite liberal lending to quite tight lending over such a short period of time — that's caught quite a few people unaware and affected the market quite significantly.'"