By Leith van Onselen The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released a new report which shows that global forces have been a major driver of growth in house prices in Australia and abroad over recent decades. The report notes that house price growth has become increasingly synchronised at both city and country level, particularly since
By Leith van Onselen The wheels continue to fall off Toronto’s housing market, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB): Greater Toronto Area REALTORS® reported 7,228 residential transactions through TREB’s MLS® System in March 2018. This result was down by 39.5 per cent compared to a record 11,954 sales reported in March 2017 and down
By Leith van Onselen This time last year, Transparency International ranked Australia as having the weakest anti-money laundering (AML) laws in the Anglosphere, failing all 10 priority areas. By contrast, the UK was ranked as having the strongest AML laws in the Anglosphere, failing just one out of 10 priority areas. Despite the polar opposite findings,
By Leith van Onselen CNBC has published an interesting report on the large number of Californians that are leaving the state due to crippling housing costs: Californians may still love the beautiful weather and beaches, but more and more they are fed up with the high housing costs and taxes and deciding to flee to
By Leith van Onselen Earlier this month, it was suggested that the wheels were falling off Canada’s biggest housing market – Toronto- with the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) reporting that house sales had fallen by around a third year-on-year in the Greater Toronto area, with average sales prices for all dwelling types also down
By Leith van Onselen From Bloomberg comes news that London’s house prices are falling at their fastest pace since the Global Financial Crisis: London house prices are falling at the fastest pace since the depths of the recession almost a decade ago, with the capital’s most expensive areas seeing the biggest declines. Average prices fell
By Leith van Onselen It looks like the wheels are well a truly falling off Toronto’s housing market. From the Financial Post: Home sales in the Greater Toronto Area plunged 34.9 per cent in February compared to the same month a year ago as buyers adjusted to new mortgage rules and government policy interventions, the
By Wendell Cox, cross-posted from New Geography: Housing affordability is what largely drives the standard of living the United States. The 14th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey showed that, in 2016, there was a 0.83 correlation between the housing unaffordability, measured by the Median Multiple (median house price divided by median household income) and
By Leith van Onselen Just weeks after Moody’s warned that Canada’s (as well as Australia’s) housing market (and banks) were at risk, Teranet has reported its results for November, which recorded its third consecutive fall in Canadian home values, let by Canada’s biggest city Toronto: In November the Teranet–National Bank National Composite House Price Index™
Via Bloomie: Canada’s banking regulator released final rules that will make it tougher for borrowers to take on uninsured mortgages, adding to a growing list of measures to rein in the nation’s housing markets. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions announced measures targeting borrowers in the uninsured segment of the mortgage market that has been responsible for
By Leith van Onselen From Bloomberg comes news that London’s house prices are falling at their fastest pace since the Global Financial Crisis: Early data point to home values in London declining 2.7 percent in September from a year earlier, the most since 2009, according to Acadata and LSL property Services. A 0.7 percent fall
By Leith van Onselen For years I have argued that markets where land supply is unresponsive (inelastic) – via planning constraints or geographical barriers – are far more prone to suffer from more expensive housing, higher house price volatility, and bigger boom and bust cycles than markets where land supply is relatively responsive (elastic) to
By Leith van Onselen This site has frequently railed against the unfair treatment leveled at Australia’s Millennial generation. This inequity is most apparent in the housing market, where today’s younger generations are being forced to pay far more than their parents to live in smaller and poorly located accommodation. But it extends beyond housing and
By Leith van Onselen In the wake of June’s Grenfell tower disaster in London, which claimed the lives of around 80 people, another high-rise fire has been reported in Dubai caused by similar combustible cladding. From The Australian: A blaze is engulfing one of the world’s tallest residential buildings in Dubai, but authorities say the
By Leith van Onselen The Toronto Real Estate Board has tried to put lipstick on a pig: TORONTO, ONTARIO, August 3, 2017 – Toronto Real Estate Board President Tim Syrianos announced that Greater Toronto Area REALTORS® reported 5,921 residential transactions through TREB’s MLS® System in July 2017. This result was down by 40.4 per cent
By Leith van Onselen After being lectured for years by various ‘experts’ that Chinese buyers were not driving up Melbourne and Sydney property values, and might even be lowering prices by boosting supply, the narrative is finally changing. A case in point is the latest rant by Robert Gottliebsen (aka ‘Gotti’), who worries that Chinese
By Leith van Onselen Toronto sellers are rushing to list their homes for sale after a double whammy of government restrictions on foreign buyers and the near-collapse of Home Capital Group Inc. From Bloomberg: “We are seeing people who paid those crazy prices over the last few months walking away from their deposits,” said Carissa
By Leith van Onselen For years I have argued that Australia should look to Texas to solve Australian housing supply. This view was based primarily on the fact that Texas has been able to achieve stable and affordable housing in the face of extreme population growth (see next chart). In his latest Global Housing Watch
By Leith van Onselen Back in January, Australia’s real estate treasurer, Scott Morrison, traveled to London to gain ideas on how to address housing affordability. At the time, I questioned why Morrison had sought solutions on housing affordability from politicians located in one of the world’s most expensive housing markets – London – and from
By Leith van Onselen For years I have argued that Australia should look to Texas to solve Australian housing supply. This view was based primarily on the fact that Texas has been able to achieve stable and affordable housing in the face of extreme population growth (see next chart). Now the Dallas Federal Reserve has
By Leith van Onselen For years I have argued that markets where land supply is unresponsive (inelastic) – via planning constraints or geographical barriers – are far more prone to suffer from more expensive housing, higher house price volatility, and bigger boom and bust cycles than markets where land supply is relatively responsive (elastic) to
Cross-posted from The Conversation: The inequalities and inequities that housing markets generate have become a cross-national issue in the last decade or so. In Australia, the UK and the US, discussions of “Generation Rent” have taken centre stage. In the generational debate, older, asset-wealthy owner-occupiers advantaged by previously more stable lending conditions and historic house
By Leith van Onselen Some interesting analysis has been released recently showing the inflationary impact that foreign capital is having on international housing markets. The first piece of analysis, published in VOX, shows how foreign investor demand “has had a significant positive effect on house price growth in the last 15 years” in the UK,
By Leith van Onselen South China Morning Post’s Yonden Lhatoo has clearly had enough of the shoebox apartments being constructed around Hong Kong, penning the following rant: Emperor International Holdings has entered the hall of shame for heartless developers putting profit before people, with plans to build the tiniest homes in the city. With these
Cross-posted from Medium: Many people find the economics of housing complicated. The two authors of this article attempt to present a hopefully simple overview of the key points. Phil Hayward explains how growth boundaries causes excessive housing inflation and Brendon Harré responds to explain why intensification restrictions may also need to be loosened. The basic
By Leith van Onselen Back in June I published a disturbing report aired on SBS Dateline examining the large-scale migration/investment of wealthy Chinese into Canada’s city of Vancouver, which has forced house prices to astronomical levels and left a swathe of empty homes. The Dateline segment followed a report presented to the City in March
From Morgan Stanley: Our new Global Coincident Indicator (MSGCI) points to faster GDP growth of 3.0% in 3Q16 vs. our mid-July forecast of 2.4%. Upside surprises came from better-than-expected DM dynamics, which could give DM a better ramp into 2017 and seems to have made central banks become less dovish. Nothing but upside surprises to
By Leith van Onselen The latest data from the IMF’s Global Housing Watch reveals that real house prices globally have recovered to 2007 levels, although there is wild divergence between countries: There is a fair bit of cross-country variation, as shown in Figure 2. While house prices have increased over the past year in most
By Leith van Onselen British Columbia’s (BC) Premier, Christy Clark, has unveiled a new proposal to levy an additional 15% property transfer tax on foreign buyers in a bid to rein-in runaway housing costs in Vancouver. From CTV News: The government took aim at foreign buyers Monday, highlighting housing data that indicates they spent more
By Martin North, cross-posted from the Digital Finance Analytics Blog: The latest Financial Stability report released by the Bank of England provides insights into the UK mortgage market, and some of the concerns the regulators are addressing. Of note is the information on “Buy-to-Let” loans, or Investment Mortgage Loans. Most striking is the strong concerns
