Luxury car sales telegraphing property bust?

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It’s not often we turn to permabull Craig James for a bearish insight so it’s probably worth paying attention when he provides one:

• In the past, a slowdown of luxury vehicle sales has heralded a slowdown of upper-end property sales and prices. And, in turn, slower growth of top-end home prices has in the past led to softer growth of home prices more generally. So the indicator bears watching with annual growth of luxury vehicles now at the slowest pace in 52 months.

• Sales of new luxury passenger cars and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) stood at 105,265 in the year to March, down 1.2 per cent from the December 2016 record highs. Annual sales of Mercedes Benz, Ferrari, Bentley, Maserati, McLaren and Jaguar are all at record highs.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.