Mortgage insurer Genworth Financial has started to relax its underwriting criteria, reflecting its view that the home loan market has stabilised after a volatile couple of years in 2008 and 2009.Genworth's acting chief executive Paul Caputo said yesterday the group had relaxed its view on earnings from overtime and second jobs in loan serviceability calculations.But Caputo said he could not see the industry getting back to a position where it would underwrite loans with loan to valuation ratios of 100 per cent. Caputo said: "We support loans up to 95 per cent LVR. One of the lessons of the global financial crisis is that where a borrower has skin in the game the behaviour is very different."I don't think we will get back to underwriting 100 per cent LVR loans. "Another factor is the National Credit Act. It would be hard to see how a 100 per cent LVR loan would fit into the responsible lending criteria."Genworth yesterday released its latest homebuyer survey, showing a flat trend in confidence levels over the past year and stable hardship numbers.However, there was an increase in bearish sentiment on questions about whether it was a good time to buy a house and whether people expected to experience difficulties making repayments.The proportion of respondents who said it was a good time to buy a home fell from 50 per cent last year to 25 per cent in the latest survey. The number who thought it was a good time to buy an investment property fell from 43 per cent to 26 per cent and the number who thought it was a good time to buy a holiday home fell from 26 per cent to 13 per cent.The proportion of respondents who said they expected to have difficulty making payments in the year ahead rose from 15 per cent in 2009 to 20 per cent in the latest survey.Caputo said this bearishness was due to concerns about interest rates and cost of living increases.