A senior official at the Reserve Bank has suggested that there could be scope for greater lending safeguards in the residential mortgage market, but acknowledged this would make home loans more expensive.
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Speaking in Melbourne on Friday, Reserve Bank head of financial stability Luci Ellis said questions about the rules around how much risk banks could take on in housing finance could be a question for the Murray review into the financial system.
Ms Ellis said local banks already set aside more capital to safeguard mortgages than some of their overseas peers.
Nevertheless "it could perhaps be argued that Australia should go further and be even more conservative in its treatment of housing finance", she said.
''Whether and how far to go in this direction is something the financial system inquiry may want to examine,'' she said.
The statements may represent a slight softening in the position of the central bank, which has for some time argued that Australia did not need the ''macro-prudential'' lending rules that exist in some other countries. These rules limit the amount a borrower can take out on a mortgage relative to the value of the property they are borrowing against.
Ms Ellis' comments came a day after Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens issued an unusually blunt warning to property investors in the Sydney market during a speech in Hobart.
''Investors should take care in the Sydney market, which is the main area where a large increase in borrowing has been occurring,'' Mr Stevens said.
''The total value of credit approvals for investor loans in New South Wales as a whole is about 130 per cent higher than in 2008, and it is in the investor segment where there has been evidence of some increase in lending with loan-to-value ratios above 80 per cent in the past couple of quarters.''
Ms Ellis acknowledged that a tightening of mortgage availability would make it difficult for some to purchase.
"That would, of course, make mortgages more expensive and less available than they otherwise would be," she said.
Ms Ellis was also critical of super fund management services. "Every dollar that is paid in fees to trustees, fund managers and all the other layers of the industry is a dollar that is not going into Australians' retirement savings," she said.
