ABSTRACT
In any housing finance system a lending institution must have a set of rules, or at least basic criteria, to enable it to decide what types of property it wishes to accept as security for its loans, which individuals it will lend to, how much it will lend to them, and what interest rate it will charge. Such criteria will not usually be absolute. They will change over time according to the availability of funds for lending, the state of the economy and especially the level of interest rates, the level of government support for, or intervention in, the mortgage market, and the amount of competition for new business. What is regarded as bad lending practice one year can become the accepted procedure the next.
