Australian Property

Yesterday, the CEO of property listings portal, REA Group, claimed the crash in property sales is “about as bad as it can get [and] it’s the worst market we’ve ever seen”.

Via Damien Boey at Credit Suisse: We have just published an article on the drivers of the Sydney housing market recovery.

So much for the slowdown: I have seen this before in this index.

The “paradox of thrift” was a theory made famous by renowned economist John Maynard Keynes.

In 2010, the CBA produced the below slide claiming that part of the reason why Australian housing is so expensive is because we have the biggest homes in the world: HSBC’s Paul Bloxham made similar arguments: …the quality of the housing stock is high.

The Australian Banking Association and the Greens are calling on the federal government to tighten anti-money laundering laws.

The best laid plans of mice and property locusts, via the AFR: Big banks are seeking the flexibility to charge higher interest rates under the Morrison government’s scheme to help first home buyers because of the increased risk of lending to first-time borrowers with as little as 5 per cent deposit.

Friday’s ABS data on new mortgage lending revealed another solid increase in September, driven by owner-occupiers: As regular readers know, we consider the flow of new mortgages to be a prime indicator for property price growth.

Today’s housing finance data for September from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recorded a continued rebound in mortgage commitments: As shown above, total finance commitments (excluding refinancings) rose by 1.3% in September, with owner-occupied commitments rising 3.2%, more than offsetting a 4.0% fall in investor commitments.

Off-the-plan buyers of Australia’s biggest apartment complex –  Australia 108 – are haemorrhaging losses of up to 25%, after valuations plunged from their 2015 contract date.

The latest CoreLogic residential construction costs report (CHIP – September quarter) claims that costs associated with dwelling construction continued to rise at a faster pace than inflation over the September quarter.

Via Banking Day: Westpac has flipped another card in a bid to revive its anaemic mortgage business by loosening the household expenditure benchmark it uses to assess investment borrowers.

SQM Research has released its stock on market report for October, which posted a 2.0% seasonal rise in listings over the month but a 4.8% decrease in listings over the year: Listings rose across all markets over October except Darwin, whereas over the year listings fell across five out of eight markets.

Via Martin North: In the final part of our October 2019 Household Survey we look at the results through the lens of our segmentation models. What is clear is there is a disconnect between future home price expectations (much more positive) and proposed activity (lower demand for credit, and intentions to transact).

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) estimates that some property owners have undeclared income of more than $70,000 a year in earnings from short-term rental platforms like Airbnb.

Earlier this year, billionaire Huang Xiangmo’s permanent residency was cancelled for reasons including character grounds.