The game is rigged and the fix is in. The east coast housing market downturn is over … at least for now.
Don’t take my word for it. A veritable army of tipsters have called the bottom over recent weeks. They include property analysis firms SQM Research, Domain and CoreLogic, AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver — who was one of the first to tip the big downturn — BIS Oxford Economics, ANZ, and even the Reserve Bank.
“Conditions in the established housing markets of Sydney and Melbourne had improved a little since the previous meeting,” RBA board members noted at their last meeting.
“Housing prices had stabilised in June in these cities and auction clearance rates had picked up further, albeit still on low volumes.”
The RBA is the closest thing to “the house” in the casino that the Australian market has become — not because it stands to profit from rising prices, but because the economy and financial system it manages stands to lose their shirts if the market goes bust. It’s also one of the few institutions that can dramatically alter the odds at the stroke of a pen, through interest rate moves.
Reserve Bank officials clearly believe the current downturn has run its course, barring an international shock that hits the Australian economy or financial system.
ANZ — one of the four high rollers that bankroll Australia’s housing market — agrees.
“Policy easing and an associated lift in sentiment looks to have helped drive a sharp improvement in auction clearance rates,” the bank’s economists Felicity Emmett and Adelaide Timbrell wrote this week.
This graph of seasonally adjusted monthly house price moves, based on CoreLogic data, tells the story.
“Our view is that dwelling price rises may materialise from the second half of the year as demand increases as a result of the expected improvement in confidence,” SQM’s Louis Christopher wrote in late May.
And it’s not just the experts. More consumers now agree that house prices are about to turn around. And where expectations go, prices usually follow.
The house generally wins
Mr Christopher attributes his forecast change to three factors, all policy-related, and most other analysts agree.
The first is the Coalition’s election victory, which took Labor’s likely changes to negative gearing and a reduced capital gains tax discount off the table — at least for the next few years, and possibly permanently.
The second was (then expected, now implemented) cuts to the Reserve Bank’s cash rate, leaving both it and mortgage rates at record lows, where they will almost certainly stay for a long time.
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.