Australian Property

Friday’s mortgage credit data from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) revealed record low mortgage growth on both a quarterly and annual basis (see below charts).

Auction clearance rates softened over the weekend, with the preliminary rate nationally falling to the low-70s%, driven by retracements across the two biggest markets: The preliminary national auction clearance rate rose to 73.6% versus 79.6% last weekend.

Via Chris Joye today: Pity the perma-bears, because the great Aussie housing boom is back.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released dwelling approvals data for the month of July. At the national level, the number of dwelling approvals crashed by a seasonally adjusted 9.7% to 12,944. The overall slump in approvals was broad-based with both houses (-3.3%) and units (-18.4%) falling.

Dan O’Brien is the head of Cladding Safety Victoria, a newly established cladding rectification body.

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) has reported that one in 10 consumers who take out a home loan via a mortgage broker are finding it hard to meet their repayments within 12 months.

It’s horrible to watch as APRA’s head zombie regulator, Wayne Byers, shuffles along after a revving house price Ferrari.

The AFR is wasting no time in bringing the spruik back with Louis Christopher out of the blocks, now expecting 2% growth in Sydney this quarter and a modest 4% in Q4: “I’m not ruling out a new housing boom,” he said.

The cost of rectifying Australia’s high-rise apartment faults continues to soar.

Via Martin North today: Digital Finance Analytics will be releasing the results from our rolling household surveys over the next few days.

At the beginning of this month, we saw some pretty stark divergence between property doyens.

ABC 7.30 Report aired an interesting segment on the property market, which featured several ‘experts’ pontificating over whether the market will return to its former boom time glory.

Good work from Jason Murphy at News today: The Reserve Bank has delivered a shocking warning on the consequences of interest rate cuts, even as it is slashing them to record lows.

SQM Research’s managing director, Louis Christopher, released his weekly email newsletter last night, which claimed that Sydney’s housing overvaluation has fallen from a peak of 52% to 21%: The Sydney housing market has bottomed out.