Australian Property

By Leith van Onselen The September quarter consumer price index (CPI) data, released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), revealed continued weak rental growth at the national capital city level.

By Leith van Onselen Domain must be living in a parallel universe.

Morgan Stanley has some nice charts today on the house price triple whammy bearing down Australia.

If you want a good laugh, check out this video from the guys at The Property WOD (Workout of the Day).

As the loon pond disappears into that good night, Prime Minister Turnbull is seeing polls converge around an election winning lead.

Bring it, from the AFR: As first reported by Street Talk Online on Monday, Bell Potter analyst Chris Savage put a $266 million to $315 million enterprise value on the business, which implied 8.6-times to 10.2-times forecast 2016 financial year EBITDA, and said the equity value was $276 million to $325 million.

By Leith van Onselen Victoria’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) has released September’s data on the number of housing transfers and mortgage lodgements/discharges, which suggests that Victoria’s (read Melbourne’s) housing market is well and truly in the blow-off phase of the bubble.

Ms Kelly O’Dwyer may tell us all that negative gearing benefits blue collar workers but Lindsay David has a better take on it: We could extrapolate that across every blue ribbon electorate in Australia.

By Leith van Onselen Deloitte Financial services has released a new report, “Mythbusting Tax Reform” , which among other things argues that the 50% capital gains tax (CGT) discount, implemented in 1999 by the Howard Government, is too generous and has helped fuel negatively geared property investment.

Courtesy of RPData: An interesting contrast between the two cities.

By Leith van Onselen We truly are living in Bizzaro Land.

Core Logic-RP Data released its auction market report yesterday, which posted a further deceleration in the preliminary national auction clearance rate driven by falls in both Melbourne and Sydney.

By Leith van Onselen ABC’s The Business last night ran a segment examining the Self-Managed Superannuation Fund (SMSF) sector’s exposure to property leverage, and fears that SMSFs could be left “dangerously exposed” as mortgage rates rise and the property market cools.

By Leith van Onselen Stephen Koukoulas (aka “The Kouk”) has penned a spirited article in The Drum arguing that Australia is “almost certainly a million miles away from a house price collapse”: As 2015 draws to an end, there is little doubt that the stars are moving into line to see price growth stall.

As I noted recently, Dr Andrew Wilson of Domain will tell you to buy property as the concrete is poured over his and the market’s dead face.

From Perth Now: CHINESE students could soon study virtually fee-free at WA universities under a groundbreaking deal to help the state capture more of the multi-billion dollar international higher education industry.

By Leith van Onselen Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) head, Wayne Byres, has given testimony today to the Senate Standing Committee on Economics in Canberra, whereby he admitted that APRA had acted too late in addressing lending standards, which in some cases had fallen to “horribly low” levels that lacked “common sense”.

By Leith van Onselen One of the biggest lies peddled by the Coalition Government and the property lobby is that property investment – and negative gearing – is the purview of middle-income earners.

From Credit Suisse: Housing is not homogenous.

By Leith van Onselen Arek Drozda, an independent property market analyst, has written a detailed post attempting to deride those of us that claim that Sydney housing affordability is ridiculous.

By Leith van Onselen Sydney’s epic apartment construction boom: Has now reached global proportions with the city now registering more construction cranes than anywhere else in the world, bar Dubai.