Pete is a Chartered Accountant, Chartered Secretary and has a Financial Planning Diploma. Using a long term approach to building businesses, investing in equities, & owning a portfolio he achieved financial independence at the age of 33. Visit his blog
Years ago when I lived in Darwin the vibe was all about investment. A new defence base here, a new mining tenement there. Those were heady days for the Northern Territory, with a labour shortage, booming wages and housing prices, and a new Prado on just about every second driveway. The big one was always…
Here’s a quick 45-second look under the hood at the latest jobs figures. No wonder Melbourne’s population has been booming, as its construction boom saw the creation of 48,500 new employed persons on a net basis over the third quarter of the calendar year. So much for immigration limiting opportunity, Victoria is really firing it up…
Some folks are trying ever-so-hard to convince everyone that Australia is heading for an economic collapse. Nothing new there, of course, but unfortunately for the gloomers nobody seems to have told the economy itself, which saw growth accelerate to a 6-year high of 3.4 per cent in FY2018. Meanwhile the resources boom is now paying…
Has a ‘perfect storm’ pushed mortgage stress to ‘epidemic’ levels, and, indeed, ‘record highs’? OK, breathe. Let’s take a look. Fortunately this one is an easy question to answer, because there’s a very simple de facto measure of mortgage stress, being late payments – or mortgage balances 30+ days in arrears. 30+ day prime arrears…
OK, first things first. I am indeed a so-termed vested interest: I would like to see full employment, stronger wages and household income growth, the Aussie economy growing at least at trend or ideally above trend, and I don’t want to see the housing market getting zinged unnecessarily. Yep, you got me on that one….
APRA’s latest monthly banking statistics reported negative growth in investment loan exposures in July. Commonwealth Bank, ANZ Bank, Westpac Banking Corp, and Suncorp all recorded an outright decline in outstanding housing investment loans, while NAB’s investment loan book was broadly flat. Year-on-year growth is either negative or slowing for each of the major banks. The…
Such a huge volume of garbage is being written, filmed, podcasted, Facebooked, and blogged about about mortgage stress right now that it’s nigh on impossible to keep up! No fewer than one million looming defaults I saw on TV this week! Oh, really. And as always just a year away, I’m sure. One of the biggest stresses…
Lots of discussion about immigration is to be expected in the lead up to the Federal election, and as the Australian population clock approaches 25 million in the coming days. It’s interesting to note that the locations where immigrants have mostly been moving to are also by far and away the strongest labour markets in…
Today’s inflation result undershot the expectations of the most credible forecasters for a seventh consecutive quarter. Headline inflation came in at 0.4 per cent in the June quarter, mainly due to a 6.9 per cent leap in fuel prices, which may not be sustained, and a further increase in tobacco excise. More importantly, the underlying…
What’s that you say? Everyone’s moving to Queensland? So they are! Here’s the incomparable Cameron Kusher with the stats. Where are they coming from? Sydney mainly… Source: Kusher/CoreLogic …and Melbourne… …and pretty much everywhere else too. This is a rational response to a price signal, with south-east Queensland offering great affordability and lifestyle. This is…
