Australian Property

By Leith van Onselen The media is abuzz today with reports about how the Government is coming after foreigners that have illegally purchased existing Australian homes.

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Greens announced over the weekend their policy to quarantine negative gearing so that rental losses on both houses and shares could no longer be claimed against unrelated wage/salary earnings.

Australia’s last sane man standing – Saul Eslake – nailed the bubble over the weekend: “I would say they are causing social harm because they are widening the gap between those who have houses and those who don’t, and freezing younger generations out of home ownership,” he told Fairfax Media.

Click to view Core Logic-RP Data’s latest weekly housing market update, which provides a useful snapshot of the housing market as at 7 June 2015.

The national auction clearance rate rose again over the weekend, continuing the record run of results.

Cross-posted from The Conversation: One routine governance decision prone to corruption is the zoning of our cities.

Chris Joye doesn’t mince words today: There’s only one party to blame for Australia’s unprecedented house price bubble.

By Leith van Onselen Almost daily now I am reading media articles on how foreign nationals are buying-up established housing across Australia, pushing up values and pricing-out locals.

By Leith van Onselen In the week ended 4 June 2015, the Core Logic-RP Data 5-city daily dwelling price index, which covers the five major capital city markets, fell by 0.44% – the fourth consecutive weekly decline, which typically happens this time of year (see next chart).

From the Westpac submission to the Tax Reform White Paper: More Efficient Ways for the System to Solve for Growth Westpac believes that a more sustainable way of ensuring the system can best support growth in periods of higher credit demand is to increase the source of high quality bank funding to support lending.

By Leith van Onselen In what is becoming an increasingly regular occurrence, Fairfax has reported yet another epic failure of Australia’s compliance/surveillance regime governing sales of existing dwellings to foreign nationals, which failed to prevent the sale of one of Australia’s biggest trophy homes.

From Banking Day: APRA’s efforts to corral runaway growth in investment lending “is now starting to bear fruit,” its chair, Wayne Byres, told a Senate committee yesterday.

By Leith van Onselen The Housing Industry Association (HIA) has today issued a media release giving its solution to Australia’s housing affordability woes: Public speculation about a housing bubble ignores the real culprits of Australia’s housing affordability problems, says the Housing Industry Association (HIA).

By Leith van Onselen In this week’s email newsletter, available for free by signing-up here, managing director, Louis Christopher, shares his experience of a Sydney auction that he attended in the Sydney suburb of Seaforth: The three-bedroom, single level house in Sydney’s Seaforth was nice, but it was nothing special.

By Leith van Onselen As noted by Houses & Holes already, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has gone full bore for the grey vote, promising no changes to negative gearing or capital gains tax concessions, no changes to super, and now promising ever-rising house prices.

By Leith van Onselen Yesterday I noted that the Paris-Based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on money laundering had in April released its report on Australia, which found that Australian residential property is a haven for international money laundering, particularly from China.

Via AAP comes the following interesting development: The Australian Tax Office is investigating 195 properties that have possibly been purchased illegally by foreign investors.

Chris Joye chimes in on the bubble debate: The biggest bubbles also tend to be accompanied by manic buying (tick that box), backed by high leverage (tick) and hyperbolic defences (tick) of the crazy prices (tick again).

By Leith van Onselen Dad’s Army’s  Alan Kohler really doesn’t seem to give a stuff about Australia’s youth.

It is quite clear that Australian financial regulators have made a group decision to jawbone the Hell out of the housing market to help the RBA keep a lid on prices while cutting rates to lower the dollar.