Australian Property

By Leith van Onselen Australian Finance Group (AFG) has released its housing finance data for the month of January, which registered a seasonal decrease in monthly mortgage applications, although both the number and value of applications were up on the same time last year.

Click to view Core Logic-RP Data’s latest weekly housing market update, which provides a useful snapshot of the housing market as at 1 February 2015.

By Leith van Onselen RP Data’s price results are in for January, with the daily index recording a 1.28% Rise over the month at the 5-city level, with Melbourne and Sydney leading the way (see next chart).

Cross-posted from MARQ Services Morgij Analytics has this morning released a survey of institutional investors and other financial market participants taken in the latter part of 2014 to gauge respondent’s views of the drivers for Australian housing and mortgage markets for 2015 and beyond.

By Martin North, cross-posted from the Digital Finance Analytics Blog APRA just released their monthly banking statistics, which provides a view of lending and deposit portfolios from the banks (ADI’s).

By Leith van Onselen In the week ended 29 January 2015, the RP Data-Rismark 5-city daily dwelling price index, which covers the five major capital city markets, rose by 0.46% (see next chart). Home prices rose in all major capitals (see next chart).

By Leith van Onselen Domain Group (previously known as Australian Property Monitors) has released its December quarter house and unit price results (below), which recorded a 2.1% increase in house prices over the quarter at the national capital city level, and a 1.7% rise in national capital city unit prices.

By Paul Egan, Philip Soos & Lindsay David Introduction Following our analysis of Federal and Victorian Parliamentarians’ real estate holdings, attention turns to Queensland, where Premier Campbell Newman has called a snap early election for 31st January, 2015.

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

From the AFR: Asia’s wealthy are falling out of love with the Aussie dollar as record-low yields and sustained declines persuade them to look elsewhere, according to UBS.

By Leith van Onselen The property lobby must be worried that the Government is considering winding back negative gearing tax concessions, with the Real Estate Institute of Australia (REIA) and the Property Council reportedly spending $60,000 on a new report aimed at combating claims that negative gearing distorts the housing market.

From the HIA: Total seasonally adjusted new home sales increased by 2.2 per cent in November 2014, following a lift of 3.0 per cent in the previous month.

Cross-posted from Cameron Kusher at RP Data.

The quarterly NAB property survey is a canvassing of real estate professionals and they appear to be losing confidence in the house price cycle. NAB Residential Property Index falls as house price expectations pared back and rents weaken. Sentiment softer in all states (and still deeply negative in WA).

Missed this yesterday but being a little slow today it’s worth revisiting.

From Alliance Bernstein via the AFR comes some sense: Alliance’s senior economist for the Asia-Pacific region, Guy Bruten, said in a note to clients that the “long shadow of the commodity price bust” remains the key theme for the Australian economy, and said the impacts from price falls would be a “multi-year affair”.

  The 2015 edition of Demographia is out. The 2015 11th Annual Edition … The 11th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey covers 378 metropolitan markets in nine countries (Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States).

From Banking Day: Credit spreads for the banks moved wider over the second half of 2014, and continue to do so.For example, in August National Australia Bank raised A$1.7 billion for 5.25 years at a credit spread of 82 basis points over the bank bill swap rate, in the domestic market.

RP Data resumed its weekend property update today.

Cross-posted from Martin North’s DFA blog.