Australian Property

Australia’s last benign oligarch standing fights on today, David Murray from the AFR: Mr Murray is insistent that the banks, which rely on foreign funds, are undercapitalised and pose a risk to the Australian economy.

By Leith van Onselen The spectacular investor-driven Sydney property bubble is a frequent theme this blog, with home prices there rising by around 35% since June 2013, according to RP Data (see next chart).

The national auction clearance rate set an all time record over the weekend, although volumes were low on account of Anzac Day.

Congratulations to the AFR for headlining LVO’s demolition of Joe Hockey’s negative gearing lies this afternoon: Economist Leith van Onselen disputed both Mr Hockey’s claim about rents and Mr Morrison’s argument that negative gearing helped build housing supply.

By Leith van Onselen It’s Friday and it has been a long week, so it’s time for a good laugh.

By Leith van Onselen Despite being schooled last month on Q&A by the Grattan Institute’s John Daley, Treasurer Joe Hockey has once again come out in defense of negative gearing, repeating the lie that rents would increase significantly if negative gearing was unwound.

Ah yes, we’re definitely approaching some sort of peak.

By Leith van Onselen In the week ended 23 April 2015, the Core Logic-RP Data 5-city daily dwelling price index, which covers the five major capital city markets, rose by 0.17% – the ninth consecutive weekly rise (see next chart). Values rose across all major capitals (see next chart).

By Leith van Onselen Victoria’s Department of Transport, Planning and Local Infrastructure (DTPLI) has released March’s data on the number of housing transfers and mortgage lodgements/discharges, which confirmed that Victoria’s (read Melbourne’s) housing market has continued to strengthen after appearing to have peaked in November.

By Leith van Onselen Core Logic-RP Data has released its Capital Markets Report for 2015, which contains some disturbing data on Australia’s land costs, which have gone vertical despite shrinking in size: The price of vacant residential land across the capital cities has increased sharply over recent years.

By Leith van Onselen If you are an investor in the Darwin housing market, you might want to sell-up now, because it is facing an almighty bust as the $34 billion Ichthys LNG Project – effectively three mega-projects rolled into one – approaches completion.

By Leith van Onselen After stealing a march on the Coalition yesterday over the issue of superannuation concessions, the Labor Opposition has now taken advantage of the community’s angst over negative gearing and has signalled that it may unwind the tax popular tax shelter.

By Leith van Onselen The March 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 The Property Council of Australia (PCA) has provided a submission to South Australia’s review of state taxation, which repeated its call to abolish stamp duty in exchange for a broad-based land tax.

The Pascometer is definitely busted: There are a number of estimates of rental yields around, none of them especially authoritative.

By Leith van Onselen From Karl Fitzgerald at Prosper Australia comes news that independent senator for South Australia, Nick Xenophon, has dumped his plan to allow first home buyers to raid their superannuation accounts to purchase a home: Cycling into work yesterday [Thursday] I bumped into the good Senator Nick Xenophon.