Unconventional Economist

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also Chief Economist and co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.

Investors drive first home buyers out of the market

On Friday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released housing finance data for August, which reported that investor demand continues to rise.

More supply is housing affordability fools gold

Last week, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released dwelling approval data, which revealed that only 166,200 dwellings were approved in the year to August, which is 73,800 (31%) below the 240,000 annual run rate required to meet Labor’s 1.2 million housing target.

Australia should be the richest nation on earth

Freelancer CEO Matt Barrie was interviewed by the Equity Mates podcast, where he argued that “Australia has all the resources and potential to be the wealthiest country in the world”.

Australian economy faces decades of stagflation

For years, MacroBusiness has argued that Australia’s productivity has been stifled through “capital shallowing”, which occurs when infrastructure and business investment fail to keep pace with population growth.

“Buyer’s market” spells falling house prices

Australia’s auction market has stalled, indicating that both Melbourne and Sydney could soon experience falling prices.

Weekend Reading, Media Appearances and Videos

Australian housing is a “Ponzi scheme”

Australians flee to two capital cities

Independent economist Tarric Brooker posted the following chart on Twitter (X), showing net internal migration in the year to March 2024 across Australia’s state capital cities: As you can see, only Brisbane (13,200) and Perth (8,300) had positive net internal migration over the year, whereas every other capital city lost residents to other jurisdictions.

Falling house prices lifts home ownership rate

According to the REINZ house price index, national home values in New Zealand have fallen 16.7% since the market peak in 2021.

Intergenerational report warned on housing and was ignored

Let’s take a walk down memory lane. It is June 2021, during the height of the pandemic. Australia’s borders are closed to immigration. And the NSW Intergenerational Report (IGR) has just been released, which explicitly warns that rebooting the Big Australia mass immigration program would create renewed ‘housing shortages’ across the state.

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