Australian Property

Via Banking Day: The RBA has come under heavy criticism this year from banks and other lenders for allowing the spread between the official cash rate and market rates to widen.

China’s great gambit of dumping the yuan in its trade war with the US is throwing up an interesting question today.

Falling interest rates and house prices.

Richard Wakelin says you should: Naturally, many prospective vendors are nervous about listing because they fear their property won’t sell.

Ruh roh: Sign of things to come? Bank of Queensland to lift variable home loan rates from July 2nd: +0.09% owner occupier P&I +0.15% owner occupier interest only +0.15% investor loans +0.1% lines of credit#auzbiz #property — RICARDO GONÇALVES (@BUSINESSricardo) June 25, 2018 Front and back book.

Via The Adviser: As banks continue to tighten their home lending policies in response to regulatory pressure and the negative press surrounding the royal commission, Australia’s top brokers are finding it increasingly difficult to help their clients.

BISOxford is out with its latest outlook: The slowdown in house prices is expected to continue until 2021, with Sydney emerging as the capital city with the worst prospects while Brisbane surprises as the city with the most upside, economic forecaster BIS Oxford Economics says.

Weak but didn’t get any worse this week, via CoreLogic: Preliminary clearance rate improves across the combined capital cities over the week The preliminary clearance rate increased to 58.7 per cent this week, after last week saw the final clearance rate revise down to just 52.4 per cent.

Cross posted from The Conversation by Richard Holden Professor of Economics and PLuS Alliance Fellow, UNSW In a week that was fairly light on data releases, let’s return to Australia’s perennial favourite topic – house prices.

Via the AFR comes Charter Hall legand Cedric Fuchs: …”We have seen a very artificial thing happen with the central banks pulling interest rates down – I think the last time interest rates went that low was 500 years ago.

Canada may well be presaging the Australian property market with buying conditions in May falling well below expectations.

From the AFR: “Broke” real estate agents are quitting British disrupter Purplebricks in droves as the fixed-fee agency’s low-margin, high-turnover business struggles to achieve enough sales amid a slowing Australian housing market.

Meh: Home Values Across Australia Will Continue To Diverge Into 2019, Based On The CoreLogic-Moody’s Analytics Australian Home Value Index Forecast Moody’s Analytics has developed an econometric model to forecast the direction of Australia’s residential property market down to the Statistical Area 4 level, using historical data from CoreLogic’s Hedonic Home Value Index.

  Ruh roh.

Via Morgan Stanley on macroprudential 3.0: An estimated 18 per cent of mortgage customers have a debt-to-income (DTI) ratio that is above six times, an analysis of 1836 mortgagors shows, which is unacceptable when seen through the lens of new lending rules.

Via the ASX: Aqualand just got itself a captured realtor cheap as chips!

Via the ABC: As property prices in Australia have climbed over the past few years, thousands of Australians desperate to get a foothold on the property ladder have used interest-only loans.

The critical point for me is that the RBA does not see rates ever falling below 1%.

By Leith van Onselen The ABS yesterday released its property price data for the March quarter, which valued Australia’s dwelling stock owned by households at $6.57 trillion, whereas the total housing stock was valued at a record $6.91 trillion.

Macquarie joins the party: Despite almost daily negative headlines in the mainstream media, the rate of adjustment has also been relatively orderly.