Australian Property

By Leith van Onselen CoreLogic’s daily house price index for 16 January, released yesterday, revealed that Melbourne dwelling value declines have hit 8%: The below chart shows how Melbourne’s price decline compares against prior price corrections: As you can see, Melbourne’s current downturn is fast approaching the 2008-09, 2010-12, and 1989-92 episodes.

By Leith van Onselen Things have gone from bad to worse for Australia’s apartment market, with firefighters identifying 10,000 buildings along Australia’s east coast with suspected flammable cladding.

By Leith van Onselen With yesterday’s release of Australia’s dwelling construction data for the September quarter, it’s once again time to examine how Australia’s dwelling supply is tracking against population growth.

By Leith van Onselen The ABS has released dwelling construction data for the September quarter, which recorded a sharp fall in commencements but an increase in completions.

By Leith van Onselen For years, ‘Big Australia’ booster, the Grattan Institute, has called for Australia’s supposedly underutilised middle-ring suburbs to be bulldozed for apartments and townhouses in order to house the many millions of extra migrants projected to inundate our cities over coming decades.

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.

By Leith van Onselen Already tarnished by the flammable cladding fiasco, the reputation of Australia’s high-rise apartments may be damaged beyond repair after huge cracks were discovered in the newly completed 34-storey Opal Tower at Sydney’s Olympic Park, raising fundamental questions about build quality.

By Leith van Onselen Australia’s mass immigration program might be a dream come true for developers, since it provides an endless flood of new residents and pressure for development: However, it is a nightmare for the working class, as evident by the surge in rental stress and homelessness across migrant-stuffed Western Sydney.

By Leith van Onselen Last week it was Virgin, today NAB-owned U-Bank has announced that it will lift its mortgage rates by up to 20-basis points.

By Leith van Onselen Robert Gottliebsen (“Gotti”) has pushed the panic button today, warning that many recent buyers of rise apartments are drowning in negative equity.

By Leith van Onselen L-plate Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, is now claiming that low and middle-income earners would bear the brunt of Labor’s proposed capital gains tax reforms.

By Leith van Onselen CoreLogic’s latest dwelling sales data was more bad news for those groups heavily reliant on property transactions, such as real estate agents and state governments (via stamp duty).

By Leith van Onselen L-Plate Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has opened a new dumb front in the Coalition’s war against Labor’s negative gearing policy, arguing that delaying implementation by one year could blow a $6-billion hole in the federal budget.

By Leith van Onselen Last week, the senior bureaucrat who reviewed building regulation for the NSW Government warned that defects in the 34-storey Opal Tower at Sydney’s Olympic Park “are likely just the tip of the iceberg”.

By Leith van Onselen The Coalition plans to target 270,000 young renters in Australia’s 25 most marginal seats in the lead-up to the next election, believing that Labor’s plans to curb negative gearing could prove a vote winner for the federal government.

By Leith van Onselen The Howard Government’s decision to allow self-managed super funds (SMSFs) to leverage into property and other investments was a mistake.

Via The Guardian: The senior bureaucrat who reviewed building regulation for the New South Wales government has condemned the lack of action on his 2015 report, warning the defects in the Opal Tower at Sydney’s Olympic Park “are likely just the tip of the iceberg”.

Drip, drip, drip: “The decision to increase interest rates is never easy.