Australian Property

By Leith van Onselen What is it with The Australian newspaper?

The national auction clearance rate slid further over the weekend on the back of declines in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Click to view RP Data’s latest weekly housing market update, which provides a useful snapshot of the housing market as at 21 September 2014.

If you get five spare minutes today, make sure you watch the above tirade by Alan Kohler on Australian housing , whereby he cheers on Australian house prices and effectively tells first home buyers to eat shit.

By Leith van Onselen As H&H has pointed out, Former Treasurer Peter Costello, made some good points today about the challenges ahead for the economy and property but he also backed-up Joe Hockey’s poor effort yesterday, claiming that there is no housing bubble because there is a shortage of supply.

From The Age: At a property industry event in Sydney on Wednesday, the former treasurer said Australia’s luck was “beginning to run out”, the country had big questions to grapple with in the near future.

By Leith van Onselen SQM Research has released its rental market report for August, which revealed a slight rise in the number of vacancies but a stable rental vacancy rate of 2.3% (see below table).

From Alan Kohler today: … a large part of the foreign buying of local real estate is not from Chinese citizens flouting the local regulations in the apparently correct belief they won’t get caught, but because of “Business Innovation and Investment visas”.

Here’s an article from the FT that will send a shiver through the entire politico-housing complex: The anti-corruption campaign which has swept across China in the last two years has gone global, as Beijing seeks to enlist the help of western democratic governments in pursuing officials who flee overseas.

The national auction clearance rate slid over the weekend on the back of declines in Sydney and Melbourne.

Click to view RP Data’s latest weekly housing market update, which provides a useful snapshot of the housing market as at 14 September 2014.

By Leith van Onselen In welcome news, the Federal Labor Party has reportedly backed replacing inefficient and inequitable stamp duties with a “property tax”.

By Leith van Onselen In the week ended 11 September 2014, the RP Data-Rismark 5-city daily dwelling price index, which covers the five major capital city markets, fell by 0.53% (see next chart). Home prices fell in all major capitals except Adelaide (see next chart).

From the AFR: Australian commercial real estate is overheating, according to some of the country’s most prominent executives, who are starting to heavily scrutinise the market.