Australian Property

By Leith van Onselen JLL has forecast that new apartment completions across Australia will fall from 23,200 in 2018 to 16,000 in 2019.

By Leith van Onselen Last night, Martin North from Digital Finance Analytics appeared on 60 Minutes where he warned that “Australia has built a generation of properties that could become slums in just 20 years”: Mr North criticised developers and the housing industry for “throwing up” high-rise buildings at such alarmingly fast rates.

BLD is today’s housing economy domino: Always blame the weather.

By Leith van Onselen Australia’s apartment market is literally going up in flames, with another high-rise apartment block in Melbourne’s CBD catching alight and believed to be constructed using the same flammable cladding used on London’s Grenfell Tower and Melbourne’s Lacrosse Tower.

Justice Kenneth Hayne has delivered his final report on banking crime to Josh Recessionberg and the footage is priceless: Why so pissed, Ken?

By Leith van Onselen With Australia’s housing correction now dragging on for 16 months, and peak-to-trough declines totalling 7.8% at the capital city level, it’s an opportune time to compare this correction to prior episodes.

By Leith van Onselen The December quarter consumer price index (CPI) data, released on Wednesday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), revealed that real inflation-adjusted rents continue to fall.

How far down are house prices again?

CoreLogic has released its first auction report for 2019, which reported another weak round of auctions on very low volumes.

The lunatic RBA doesn’t want to cut interest rates.

From Chris Joye today: If Prime Minister Scott Morrison pulls off a miracle and wins the May election, housing conditions should stabilise as investors pile back into the market to pick up cheap assets once the threat of Labor’s deleterious tax changes is removed.

Good new this, via Domain: Unruly Airbnb guests will soon cause more headaches for their hosts, as neighbours gain new legal powers to seek compensation of up to $2000 and bans for problem rentals.

Via News: “If you had asked me in September last year I probably would have been surprised to see Sydney and Melbourne values down more than 4 per cent over the rolling quarter,” said CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless.

Via Capital Economics: The RBA will probably reduce its GDP growth forecasts but should still signal that the next move in rates will be up Our more pessimistic outlook for economic activity, the labour market and inflation suggest that the Bank may instead have to cut interest rates before long.

Via CoreLogic comes the full January house price report: The first month of the New Year has seen a continuation in the broad-based housing market weakness with every capital city apart from Canberra recording a month-on-month fall in dwelling values.

Via The Australian comes Same White, chairman of mortgage broker Loan Market and deputy chairman of the Ray White real estate group: …even the banks’ credit teams were unsur­e of their lending standards.

ING on the move, via Mozo: Online lender ING has become the latest bank to lift its variable home loan rates following an announcement earlier today.