Australian Property

Roy Morgan reports that the share of Australian households in mortgage stress has risen to its highest since 2011 with 27.2% of mortgage holders now considered ‘At Risk’: A borrower is considered ‘At Risk’ when their mortgage repayments are greater than a certain percentage of household income (i.e.

Housing commentators are calling on policy makers to lift housing supply to solve Australia’s worsening rental crisis, amid record-breaking immigration.

Legislation to establish the federal government’s $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) appears likely to be defeated in the upper house unless the government agrees to the concessions that are being sought by the Greens, independent senator David Pocock and the Jacqui Lambie Network.

Australian house prices continue to rebound, rising 0.7% since bottoming on 7 February, driven by a strong 1.5% rebound across Sydney: The rebound in home values has arisen despite two consecutive 0.25% interest rate hikes from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in early February and March.

LongView and PEXA have released a White Paper entitled Private Renting in Australia – A Broken System, which claims “private renting in Australia works for no one, with poor tenure security and rising rents affecting tenants, and many landlords better off investing in alternatives like superannuation”.

The AFR published an article this week explaining how 2370 people a day on average have refinanced their mortgage over the past six months.

This week I was interviewed by Catherine Cashmore for the Land Cycle Investor, where we discussed the likely impact of Australia’s record immigration boom on the nation’s housing market (among other topics).

The towering inferno engulfing global offices is building nicely.

Billionaire property developers, Harry Triguboff and Tim Gurner, were interviewed by The Australian where they predicted an “almighty rental crisis” driven by the rapid rebound of migrants and international students.

The extraordinary rebound in Australian house prices rolled on this week, with values rising another 0.23% at the 5-city aggregate level in the week ended 23 March: It was the strongest weekly rise since January 2022.

The federal government is struggling to get its $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) through parliament with the Greens and several crossbenchers indicating that they will oppose the bill in its current form.

The media is flooded with articles on Australia’s housing shortage, which is forcing people into homelessness.

Australia’s house price rebound continues in the face of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) ten consecutive interest rate hikes.

The OECD last year released data showing that Australian home ownership rates have collapsed over the past 40 years across every generation.

The 2023 Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey has been released and, once again, it ranks Australia as having one of the most expensive housing markets in the world. This year’s report assesses 94 major markets (metropolitan areas) in eight nations for the third quarter of 2022.

The 10 consecutive interest rate hikes from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) are a double-edged sword for first home buyers.

CMBS and CRE loans are in the gun in the US. JPM has more. What started as a spread widening episode in IG mezz in the week leading up to SVB’s collapse has infected AAA CMBS this past week regardless of format(Exhibit 3).

A lot has been written about the fixed rate “mortgage cliff” confronting Australia in 2023 as an estimated 880,000 borrowers shift from ultra-cheap fixed mortgages originated over the pandemic to variable mortgages with rates more than double current levels.

What a difference a year makes.

Against the odds, Australian house prices continue to bounce back in the face of ongoing interest rate rises.