Australian Property

From the AFR, home of realty rentier whining: Offshore investors have baulked at Australian property following the Foreign Investment Review Board’s inquiry into non-resident investment, according to national law firm Maddocks.

By Leith van Onselen Treasurer Joe Hockey has once again all but repeated the tired myth that the temporary abolition of negative gearing between 1985 and 1987 drove-up rents.

From Dad’s Army’s Gotti today: …it is almost impossible for dwellings to go down significantly while the existing [policy] chain remains in place.

By Leith van Onselen In his maiden Parliamentary speech, Family First senator, Bob Day (a former home builder), made the following comments in relation to Australia’s constipated land supply system [my emphasis]: The single most important factor affecting housing affordability has been land.

Yes, the bubble has gone global via Ellen: In case you’re wondering, De-Preston is an outer northern Melbourne suburb.

The national auction clearance rate delivered yet another mental result over the weekend, driven again by strong demand in Sydney and Melbourne.

Click to view Core Logic-RP Data’s latest weekly housing market update, which provides a useful snapshot of the housing market as at 29 March 2015.

By Lindsay David By all accounts, Australia is experiencing what is one of the greatest credit-fuelled real estate bubbles in modern times.

By Martin North, cross-posted from the Digital Finance Analytics Blog: One of the arguments often used to disprove any issues in the housing market is the fact that some households are paying well ahead of required repayments.

By Leith van Onselen With the release of population data for the September quarter yesterday by the ABS, I thought it timely to update the dwelling construction vs population growth figures nationally and across the major capitals to see where housing supply pressures might be easing/worsening.

By Leith van Onselen In the week ended 26 March 2015, the Core Logic-RP Data 5-city daily dwelling price index, which covers the five major capital city markets, rose by 0.07% – the fifth consecutive weekly rise (see next chart).

By Leith van Onselen Lindsay Partridge, the CEO of Building supplier Brickworks, has today echoed CSR’s warning that shortages of developable land are preventing a bigger construction uplift and helping to reduce housing affordability.

By Martin North, cross-posted from the Digital Finance Analytics Blog: We have now finished updating the DFA market model, to take account of the latest DFA survey data, and market data.

By Leith van Onselen What better way than to attempt to shut down action on foreign ownership of residential property than to label any crackdown as “racist”.

By Leith van Onselen Residex has released its house and unit price results for February, which revealed 0.39% growth in house values over the month, although unit values fell by 0.51%.

By Leith van Onselen ABC News published an interesting morsel on how foreigners view the Australian housing market: While the Reserve Bank warns of risks to specific markets, an experienced financial risk analyst recently returned to Australia from the Washington-based Institute of International finance said foreigners are puzzled about the entire Australian housing market.

By Leith van Onselen Below is another excerpt from today’s Financial Stability Review (FSR), released by the RBA, which warns of a budding apartment glut, particularly in Melbourne: Another risk arising from robust investor activity is that speculative demand could lead to an excessive increase in construction activity and future supply overhang.

By Leith van Onselen Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) chairman, Brian Wilson, has appeared before the Australian Securities and Investment Commission’s annual conference and admitted that FIRB’s ability to track foreign real estate transactions is “sorely limited” due to fundamental lack of data.

By Leith van Onselen The Age’s Michael Short has produced a curious article today offering some “innovative” solutions to Melbourne’s housing affordability woes, including living in floating apartments and shipping containers: Would you live in a funky floating apartment?

By Martin North, cross-posted from the Digital Finance Analytics blog: Today we round out the latest survey results, by updating our other segments.

By Ross Elliot, cross-posted from The Pulse: The advent of ‘urban renewal’ in the 1990s has been such a blistering policy success that it’s now arguably well out of proportion to the realities of need based on where people actually live.

By Leith van Onselen The Sydney housing bubble is really something to behold.