Australian Property

Property journalist, Brett Thomas, has neatly explained why short-term rental platforms like Airbnb are exacerbating Australia’s rental crisis: Data tracking company airdna monitors 11,043 Airbnb listings in Sydney, of which 71% are entire homes.

Australia’s auction market continues to rebound, with CoreLogic’s preliminary auction clearance rate posting its strongest result in 12 weeks. Across the combined capital cities, 62.6% of auctions were reported as sold, up from last week’s 61.5% preliminary result (later revised down to 56.0%).

On Tuesday night, I had a fabulous discussion with Martin North on the Australian economy, the state of politics and policy making, and Australia’s housing market.

The Housing Industry Association (HIA) has updated its dwelling starts forecasts, which now tips a steady decline in detached house construction all the way to 2024 on the back of rising interest rates and high construction costs: It is anticipated there will have been 131,730 detached starts in 2021/22.

ANZ Bank has released a revised outlook for the residential property market, forecasting that house prices in the nation’s capital cities will fall by 8% by the end of 2022 and by 18% between now and the end of 2023.

The federal Minister Housing and Homelessness gave an interview yesterday on the Today Show (video below) where she blamed Australia’s housing crisis on a lack of supply: “Ultimately [the housing crisis] is an issue of supply, and we need to get more homes on the ground as quickly as we can.

Australia’s house price bust has well and truly broadened beyond Sydney and Melbourne, with Brisbane now joining in the rout.

Australia’s auction results rallied for the third consecutive week, with the preliminary clearance rate lifting above 60% for the first time since early June after 61.5% of auctions returned a successful result (up 2.0% from last week): The rebound nationally was driven by Melbourne, whose preliminary clearance rate rebounded to 65.5%.

Dr Cameron Murray – author of the Book Game of Mates – gave stunning testimony to the parliamentary inquiry into housing affordability, whereby he documented how developers manipulate the land market to ration supply and maximise their profits.

Australia’s house price correction is accelerating, according to CoreLogic’s daily dwelling values index, which measures price changes across the five major capital city markets.

RPM Group’s latest Greenfield Market Report shows a sharp slump in house and land sales in Melbourne’s outer-suburban growth corridors.

The PropTrack Listings Report for July has been released, which reveals that total stock on market has ballooned 4.9% compared to this time last year – “the largest year-on-year increase since 2010”.

Comparison site Finder estimates that the average mortgage interest rate would rise to 5.85% if the official cash rate (OCR) reaches 2.5%.

Deloitte’s weekly economics briefing notes that the housing market is becoming a key driver of Australia’s inflationary pressures: Housing was one of the key contributors to the latest CPI reading (alongside transport and household goods), growing 9.0% through the year to June.