Cross-posted from The Conversation: The fire at the Neo200 building on Spencer Street in the Melbourne CBD this week has eerie similarities to the Grenfell Tower disaster. Fortunately, instead of 72 people dead as at Grenfell, only one person was hospitalised for smoke inhalation. Nevertheless, the building industry has responded straight from the Grenfell song sheet. Rydon, the
By Ross Elliott, cross-posted from The Pulse: “Around the world, the vast majority of people are moving to cities not to inhabit their centres but to suburbanise their peripheries. Thus when the United Nations projects the number of future ‘urban’ residents… these figures largely reflect the unprecedented suburban expansion of global cities.” That’s from the
From Damien Boey at Credit Suisse Yesterday, NAB announced a 12bps increase on owner-occupier conventional mortgages, and a 16bps increase on interest-only investor mortgages. In the round of out-of-cycle rate hikes last year, NAB was the odd one out, choosing not to hike with its competitors. Therefore, today’s hike brings NAB more in line with
From Damien Boey at Credit Suisse We have just published an article about the outlook for Sydney housing, now that prices have dropped around 15% from their late 2017 peak, and are falling at their fastest pace in several decades. We take note of a few positives: 1). There are tentative signs that Chinese demand is
Via Damien Boey of Credit Suisse: Momentum investing is based on the idea that tomorrow’s winners and losers will resemble yesterday’s winners and losers on average, whether on 12-month total return, or 3-month earnings revision bases. We find that macro factors can predict when momentum factors are likely to work well, although there are also
Cross-posted from Prosper Australia: Real estate cycle expert Bryan Kavanagh says turnover and price declines in Sydney and Melbourne during 2018 indicate an economic recession in the 2019-20 financial year. The 2018 “Kavanagh-Putland Index”, released today, shows the total value of Australian real estate sales to GDP. Mr Kavanagh said the $50 billion pumped into
By Martin North, Principal Adviser at Digital Finance Analytics: We have updated our scenarios to take account of potential RBA rate cuts later in the year, revised mortgage stress and household confidence data and other factors. We also updated our probability allocation. Here is a summary. Our central scenario is one of home price fall,
Cross-posted from The Conversation: There’s a lot in the Productivity Commission’s landmark 722-page table-thumper of a report into Australia’s superannuation system, completed after nearly three years of invesigation. For now, I’ll make three comments. The Commission gets the industry First, it’s a very valuable report. The Productivity Commission (PC) has undertaken a deep analysis of
Cross-posted from Independent Australia: Without a fundamental change to economic thinking, we will continue down the dystopian road, argues Stephen Williams. THE HEAD of the Muppet Show, Scott Morrison, met with state and territory leaders in Adelaide recently for the COAG chinwag. Topping the list of agenda items was population. I will try and summarise the population problem as
By Ross Elliott, cross-posted from The Suburban Alliance: In amongst changing Prime Ministers (again) or our ongoing obsession with all things Trump, there mustn’t have been much room left in the media this year for analysis of interesting jobs forecasts and other economic news. This one missed my attention, but it’s very interesting: the Federal
By Gareth Aird, senior economist at CBA: Key Points: Australian residential property prices have fallen over the past twelve months. The near term indicators suggest that prices will continue to deflate. We believe that the best indicators to watch for assessing the very near term outlook for property prices are: housing finance; auction clearance rates,
By Ross Elliott, cross-posted from The Pulse: Schlomo ‘Solly’ Angel is a world renowned urbanist and author of countless books including “Atlas of Urban Expansion”, “Planet of Cities” and “Tale of Scale.” He is adjunct professor at New York University (NYU) and senior research scholar at the NYU Stern Urbanization Project, where he leads the
By Phil Soos, cross-posted from Independent Australia: The Government has prioritised economically supporting the fossil fuels industry instead of tackling urgent climate change issues, writes Philip Soos. AUSTRALIA’S CLIMATE CHANGE culture war is a hideous spectacle. Despite the obvious reality of human-caused climate change and the urgent need to act, the powerful fossil fuels industry (FFI)
By Gareth Aird, Senior Economist at CBA: Key Points The RBA last cut the policy rate on 2 August 2016 Since then, the labour market has tightened and inflation has lifted a little, but progress has been slow We have the RBA hiking the cash rate in Q4 2019 Overview For RBA watchers it’s been
Cross-posted from The Conversation: Few things are more annoying than spending a large sum of money on a purchase, only to discover that someone else got the same thing for a lower price. This often happens with airfares. You go the same website, search the same airline, choose the same seat row and fare conditions,
Cross-posted from The Conversation: The NSW government has confirmed it will sell 51% of WestConnex — the nation’s biggest road infrastructure project — to a consortium led by Transurban, the nation’s biggest toll road corporation. NSW treasurer Dominic Perrottet described the A$9.3 billion sale to one of his party’s more generous donors as a “very
Cross-posted from The Conversation: When it comes to the gender gap in retirement incomes, symbolism appears to matter more than actually achieving something. Labor’s plan to add super contributions to government-funded parental leave was heralded by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten this week as having a “big impact down the track”. Our analysis shows it would
By Gareth Aird, Senior Economist at CBA Key Points: Australian residential property prices have fallen over the past nine months. Further declines appear likely over the next year due to softer credit growth, a continued lift in apartment supply, less foreign demand and more rational price expectations from would-be buyers. We retain our view, however,
Cross-posted from The Conversation: The Productivity Commission – the Australian government’s highly influential economic advisory body – released a report titled Rising Inequality? last week. The question mark indicates its scepticism about other research findings on rising inequality in Australia. The commission responded to its own question in the report’s very first heading: “Over nearly
Cross-posted from The Conversation: If you were going to reduce a 150-page Productivity Commission examination of trends in Australian inequality to a few words, it would be nice if they weren’t “ALP inequality claims sunk”, or “Progressive article of faith blown up” or “Labor inequality myths busted by commission”. The editorial in the Australian Financial
Tues September 4th Presenter: Dr Cameron Murray Venue: Brunswick Mess Hall Tickets Everyone needs somewhere to live. It is a simple fact. Australia’s economy keeps growing every year. As a nation, we are richer than any other time in our history. We also have some of the most expensive housing in the world. We step over
By William Bourke, President of the Sustainable Australia party Australia has a rich history of migration, with around 7 million permanent migrants calling Australia home in the 20th century alone. That’s 70,000 migrants per year – or a bumper ANZ Stadium crowd. By the turn of the century, our population had reached 19 million and
By Ross Elliott, cross-posted from The Pulse We’ve been here before – concerns about our capacity to house a large population are not new. But lately, hostility to rapid rates of population growth is gaining traction. There have been calls for a population enquiry and former PM Abbott has called for immigration (and hence population
By Elliot Clarke, Senior Economist at Westpac Overview: The significant increase in short-term wholesale interest rates and associated volatility has been a key topic of debate in markets throughout 2018. Initially linked to higher borrowing costs in the US, a further spike in only Australian rates as the June quarter drew to a close saw
By Martin North, Principal Analyst at Digital Finance Analytics: One of my clients asked me to share my thoughts on the trajectory of future home loan growth, in the light of the current market dynamics. We run a series on this in our Core Market Model, and it is updated each time we get data
Cross-posted from Independent Australia: PRIME MINISTER MALCOLM TURNBULL has a sustained and unremarkable record of achievement in office, not least of all in the top job. But let’s start with the Great Barrier Reef. First, the Turnbull Government wanted to give away a billion dollars to the Indian-owned mining company, Adani, whose Carmichael coal mine
By Gareth Aird, Senior Economist at CBA: Key Points: Stronger growth in export receipts has taken Australia’s trade balance into the black. But the current account remains in deficit because the net income deficit has widened. We expect Australia’s current account deficit to average 2½% of GDP over the next two years – lower than
Elliot Clarke, CFA Senior Economist Frances Cheung, CFA Head of Macro Strategy, Asia At the beginning of 2018, we outlined a growth view for China that would underwhelm the expectations of both the market and Chinese authorities. Against the official 2018 benchmark of 6.5% growth, we forecast 6.3% for 2018 then 6.1% in 2019. Given
Cross-posted from The Conversation: The final design document for the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), released this week, contains a range of claims about the policy’s ability to drive down both greenhouse emissions and electricity prices. But still there is precious little detail on how exactly these assertions are backed up. Specifically, two claims in the
From Bill Evans, chief economist at Westpac: The Reserve Bank Board meets next week on August 7. It is certain to keep the overnight cash rate unchanged at 1.5%. While the decision will be accompanied by the usual statement from the Governor the more interesting development for the RBA will be the release of the
