Australian Property

By Leith van Onselen After years of witnessing bogus excuses for why Australian housing affordability is not that bad – with arguments usually centered on the secular fall in mortgage interest rates over the past 25-plus years – finally we have a complete analysis of the issue from Fairfax’s Caitlin Fitzsimmons.

From S&P: The number of delinquent housing loans underlying Australian prime residential mortgage-backed securities was unchanged in December from November, according to a recent report by S&P Global Ratings.

By Leith van Onselen Australian politics really is a swamp.

CoreLogic released its auction report yesterday, which revealed another weekend of strong auction conditions, with the national auction clearance rate rising to 78.6% from 77.0% last week, to be well above the 71.4% recorded in the same weekend last year: Auction volumes nationally (3,232) were also way above the same weekend last year (2,701).

By Leith van Onselen For several years, this site has lobbied the federal government to extend Australia’s anti-money laundering (AML) regime, which currently only extends to financial institutions, to real estate gatekeepers including realtors, lawyers and accountants.

By Leith van Onselen News.com.au’s Julia Corderoy has penned a spurious article heaping praise on the WA Government’s plan to provide stamp duty relief to retirees that downsize: FINALLY, someone is doing something about the housing affordability crisis.

By Leith van Onselen The Coalition’s latest brain fart to allow first home buyers (FHBs) to access their superannuation to fund a housing deposit has quickly been shut-down by the funds management industry and Labor.

Still can’t vouch for this from Martin North but it’s still interesting: We just got the results back from this week’s household surveys, and yes, we went straight to the investor intention to transact series.

Here we have it laid bare.

By Leith van Onselen It’s raining housing bribes!

By Leith van Onselen According to The Australian today, the Turnbull Government is planning two housing bribes under the cloak of ‘housing affordability’, namely: Allowing first home buyers to access their superannuation savings for a deposit; and Allowing retirees to downsize without affecting the assets test for the Aged Pension.

By Leith van Onselen Let’s recall former Labor leader, Mark Latham’s, remarks last month calling for immigration levels to be cut in order to take the pressure off housing: “[Housing affordability] is all about supply and demand.

By Leith van Onselen To date, senator Nick Xenophon to date Xenophon has vigorously defended the housing bubble by: opposing Labor’s negative gearing policy; supporting rampant population growth; and supporting super reforms to boost property demand.

By Leith van Onselen The Victorian State Government’s transfers and mortgages data for December shows that the state’s housing market has been hit by ‘shrinkflation’: the perverse situation whereby transaction volumes are falling at the same time as prices are rising strongly.

By Leith van Onselen It seems that “getting a highly paid job” will soon only buy you half a home, with Perth developers soon to offer homes on lots as small as 80 square metres.

By Leith van Onselen The Housing Industry Association (HIA) has released a new discussion paper entitled “The Profile for Residential Building Approvals by Type and Geography”, which assesses conditions across five categories of building approvals ranging from detached houses at one end to units of 4 or more storeys at the other.

By Leith van Onselen Fresh after telling young Australians to “get a highly paid job” if they want to afford a home, Assistant Treasurer with responsibility for housing affordability, Michael Sukkar, has hosed suggestions that the Turnbull Government is considering winding-back the capital gains tax (CGT) discount and spouted lies on negative gearing.

By Leith van Onselen Remember this comment by Joe Hockey: “If housing was unaffordable in Sydney nobody would be buying it”… “The starting point for first home buyers is to get a good job that pays good money”.