SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- A 92-year-old Australian woman has become the nation's oldest first-time home buyer after securing a housing loan she does not have to pay off for another 30 years.

Her local financial institution is banking on the mother-of-five living to 122 under the terms of the loan.

Margaret Cole, who grew up in a poor coal-mining town in Wales, Britain, decided concerns among the nation's traditionally risk averse banks about her age would not stop her embracing the "great Australian dream" of home ownership.

"She has been a battler all her life and was not taking no for an answer," James Hunt, her real estate agent at First National Wyong, told Reuters on Monday.

She also bagged a A$7,000 ($3,850 USD) grant from the government for first-time homebuyers, an incentive normally aimed at the young.

Cole, who emigrated to Australia in 1976, has had a little help from her daughter and brother-in-law, whose names are also on the ANZ Bank mortgage as co-guarantors.

She plans to move into her A$198,000 ($107,000 USD) three-bedroom home at Watanobbi, a suburb north of Sydney on the New South Wales central coast, later this week.

What a wonderful story. Hopefully the price of houses will rise in the next few years so that she gets some equity in the property to cover the cost of selling in the event of her death. It could be a clever ploy, if her children have already been homeowners this could be a neat way of giving them the first time buyer's bonus from the government.

^I think that is exactly what has happened.

Her daughter and son-in-law wanted an investment, and thought this is a great way to get access to the first home owners grant while already owning a home.

If the 92 year old has never owned a home before I would be very surprised if she wasn't living off the pension. Which means her kids are paying for the mortgage. A pension simply isn't enough to cover it.

Just another group trying to rip off the system and getting away with it IMHO.

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Hopefully the price of houses will rise in the next few years ...

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Sue, house prices have gone through the roof in Sydney lately. The average price is almost $300,000! For that price, you could almost buy Wales

The banking system in Australia has me stuffed. I tried to get a credit card when I was 20 with just a little limit of $500 and they wouldn't give me one despite the fact I was working a full time job and had a nice chunk of money with them. The reason was that I had no assests (in a financial sense ). Now how many assests could this elderly woman have???

Could the bank be thinking that we'll get a heap of interest money off the old dear and when she carks it we can get the house and sell it at a tidy profit?

Copago, shame on you. How can you possibly believe that the banks would be so underhand and devious and have anything but their customer's interest at heart.

^Where exactly are those prices for though?

From what I have heard about Sydney(and I could be completely wrong) $300 000 is an hour or so out from the city, at least. Thank god Brisbane is cheaper, it's actually affordable.

Surely people aren't paying $1 million for a house more than an hour out from the city?

Sue, those prices are unbelievable! I shouldn't be complaining at all.

Sydney real-estate is the most expensive in the country, and there are many suburbs where the median price is over $1.5 million.

I am an hour from the city, jaza, and there are suburbs further out where it is quite hard to find anything under a million.

Just an example of the lunacy that is currently happening- a converted public toilet (about 3 metres square) was sold for $180,000! The new owner plans to turn it into a sushi-bar- I do not think I will be eating there! It is not even in a 'nice' suburb...

Ouch!
I live in northern Alabama, USA, and I bought a tar-paper shack (really!) sitting on 4.4 acres of land for $25,000.00. Guess I got a real bargain, eh? Trouble is, my tax appraisal says it's worth $32,500.00, yet none of the banks around here will loan me more than$20,000.00 against it. Screwed again!