Australian Property

JMG Building Surveyors CEO John Massey has urged Prime Minister Scott Morrison to resolve what he says is a national crisis concerning professional indemnity insurance.

Via ANZ at the AFR today: “We have revised our forecasts and now expect prices to bottom out in coming months and rise modestly through to the end of 2019, before gaining around 3 per cent in 2020,” ANZ said.

The property lobby has won again with Victorian taxpayers to spend $600 million for rectification workers to remove flammable cladding from the state’s high-rise buildings: Victorian taxpayers will help fund major rectification works on buildings with dangerous combustible cladding, Premier Daniel Andrews says.

From CoreLogic’s quarterly auction report: CoreLogic recorded a strengthening trend in auction clearance rates over the June quarter – the last time the result was this strong was back in June 2018.

A handy table from Bloomie: The key measure is household debt-to-GDP.

Via CoreLogic, new listings continue to be very weak and unsold inventory is now down year on year: The leading mortgage index is still below last year but the gap has closed markedly: The market continues to rebalance more bullishly (or less bearishly).

Billionaire Meriton apartments developer, “Highrise” Harry Triguboff, has threatened NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian with legal action for Ryde MP Victor Dominello’s opposition to Meriton’s 1270 Meriton unit development in Sydney’s Macquarie Park.

The ANZ Bank has advised that its ‘floor rate’ for home loan customers will be reduced from 7.25% to 5.5% in response to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s (APRA) recent reforms.

Owners are facing potential financial ruin after a series of high profile structural faults were discovered at major Sydney apartment complexes, which comes on top of the widespread use of flammable cladding.

Via the AFR: House prices in Brisbane could surge as much as 20 per cent over the next three years as economic growth underpins buying in the city’s relatively affordable residential stock, according to BIS Oxford Economics.

From Westpac Senior Economist, Matthew Hassan: Given the intense focus on Australia’s housing markets at the moment and in light of our recent commentary around the best way to interpret auction market results (see here) we are now providing short previews each Friday and summary updates the following Monday setting out how results should be viewed.

Last month, the Australian Institute of Building Surveyors (AIBS) released a member communique warning that “the situation around Professional Indemnity (PI) Insurance has reached crisis point” with “a real possibility that without government intervention… private building surveyors may be forced out of work and the construction industry across Australia will be significantly impacted”.

By Cameron Kusher at CoreLogic: The ABS data showed that at the end of the March quarter, household net worth was $10.243 trillion.

Sydney’s apartment market is in crisis after a series of high profile structural faults have been reported at major apartment complexes.

Following on from yesterday’s ABS release of dwelling commencements and completions for the March quarter, it’s time once again to plot Australia’s various measures of dwelling construction against population growth, namely: Dwelling approvals to March 2019; Dwelling commencements to March 2019; Dwelling completions to March 2019; and Population change to December 2018.

The chief economist for the REA Group, Nerida Conisbee, has given an interview in News.com.au, whereby she claim that Chinese investors have fled the Australian property market: “We are now looking at a very different property market to what it was like during the boom,” realestate.com.au chief economist Nerida Conisbee said.

Australian Finance Group (AFG) has released its housing finance data for the June quarter, which registered a bounce in the number and value of mortgage applications; although applications were still down solidly over the year.

From the HIA comes the outlandish claim that Australian housing affordability is the “best since 1999”: “The combination of lower home prices, improvements in wage growth and lower interest rates have contributed to the ongoing improvement in the HIA Affordability Index for the June 2019 quarter,” said Geordan Murray, HIA Senior Economist.