Australian Property

From Martin North: And here’s more from Martin North: Following on from yesterdays video blog on the overall results from the latest household surveys, over the next few days, we will dig further into the data.

By Ross Elliott, author of The Pulse: In the fine tradition of public policy in Australia, we leave things until it’s long overdue.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released dwelling approvals data for the month of June.

By Leith van Onselen Wayne Tseng, founder of the Chinese Chamber of Property Investors, which represents Chinese property investors – both local and foreign – has raised concern at the blame being heaped upon Chinese investors for inflating property values and pricing-out locals.

From The Australian, Bronwyn Bishop has apologised for “choppergate”: Mrs Bishop, interviewed by 2GB’s Alan Jones today, insisted she was technically “right” to claim the benefits although she was sorry they did “not look right”.

From the AFR which clearly didn’t get the memo from Domain: Andrew Fawell​, director of the Beller Group, a diversified property group with offices in Shanghai selling Australian property to Chinese investors, said there is anecdotal evidence some investments could be axed because buyers have suffered heavy losses on China’s bourses.

Cross-posted from Martin North.

By Leith van Onselen The vice continues to tighten around property investors, this time from AMP: One of Australia’s largest second-tier lenders is suspending new property investor loan approvals until later this year to comply with the bank regulator’s limits.

By Leith van Onselen In this week’s email newsletter, available for free by signing-up here, SQM Research’s managing director, Louis Christopher, provides a nice summary of the state-of-play of the Australian housing market in the wake of the recent changes to investor mortgage policies by the Australian banks: Over the last three weeks.

From Sydney Morning Domain: Raising interest rates on home loans held by property investors could boost bank profits by up to $400 million a year, experts say.

Cross-posted from Bullion Baron: Picture a science lab with a square metal table in the centre.

By Leith van Onselen Another day, another report about foreign investors hoovering up established Australian homes, this time in Queensland [my emphasis]: MOVE over, Sydney and Melbourne.

Cross-posted from Martin North. NAB is the latest player to announce mortgage repricing changes, but with a focus in interest-only loans (whether owner-occupied or investment loans).

Click to view Core Logic-RP Data’s latest weekly housing market update, which provides a useful snapshot of the housing market as at 26 July 2015.

The AFR can’t believe it: In a remarkable decoupling, the standard variable home loan rate for property investors is moving higher while expectations are for the cash rate to continue to fall.

By Leith van Onselen The AFR offered more warnings over the weekend on how the investor-led housing boom is on borrowed time following the effective speed limit placed on investor mortgage growth by APRA, APRA’s higher capital requirements on the banks’ mortgage books, and the tougher lending policies already implemented by the banks.

Core Logic-RP Data released its auction market report yesterday, which revealed a slight improvement in the national auction clearance rate.

By Gavin Putland, cross-posted from the Land Values Research Group: The McKell Institute’s report on negative gearing (Richard Holden, Switching Gears, June 2015) concluded that negative gearing for future investors should be allowed only for new homes.