The 2026 Intergenerational Report (IGR) is presented as a 40-year outlook, but reads like a defence of current policy. Housing – the major source of generational insecurity – barely appears. “Housing supply” occurs five times in 352 pages – see AI is of some use – while the report claims recent tax changes will create…
For most property investors, Capital Gains Tax is something they usually think about when they’re preparing to sell. But the coming changes to Australia’s CGT regime mean there is an important date investors should be thinking about well before their property ever goes on the market. From 1 July 2027, the current 50% CGT discount for…
Australia’s rental crisis has been building for years, but new figures suggest the pressure could become even worse. We already know Australia doesn’t have enough homes. Vacancy rates remain tight, rents have risen substantially and population growth continues to create new households requiring somewhere to live. Yet at precisely the time we need more rental…
Australia’s current housing downturn has ended the recent run of record resale results, with the share of profitable sales falling from a 21-year high and the median gain retreating from its March peak. Cotality’s latest Pain & Gain report analysed more than 94,000 residential resales in the June quarter, finding 95.4% delivered a nominal profit,…
For generations, Australians have responded to housing affordability pressures in a predictable way – when the home they wanted became too expensive, they moved further from the city. But something important is changing. Australia’s affordability problem has become so entrenched that many buyers are making a different compromise. Rather than simply changing where they live, they…
For years, the housing affordability debate has focused heavily on property prices, with the assumption that if home values fall, homes automatically become more affordable. But the latest figures from the Real Estate Institute of Australia remind us that affordability is much more complicated than the price on the contract. Australian house prices softened over…
There is no doubt that our housing markets are facing challenges from all directions, but clearly they have remained more resilient than the property pessimists had predicted. To better understand what’s happening, this monthly collection of charts from Cotality paints an interesting picture. According to Cotality, Australia’s most expensive homes are leading the housing downturn, with upper-quartile…
Something interesting is happening in Australia’s property market, with auction clearance rates only telling part of the story. Auctions work best when several motivated buyers compete for the same property, creating urgency and pushing prices higher. But as buyer demand has softened in 2026, that competition has become harder to generate. New Domain research shows…
There is a dangerous tendency in Australia’s housing debate to assume that anything that makes life harder for property investors must automatically make life easier for first-home buyers and tenants. It’s a good political argument that sounds appealing, particularly when housing affordability is such an emotional issue, but housing markets don’t work in isolation. Investors,…
Capital city home rental vacancy rates generally tightened over August with most remaining at historically low levels. Despite low and tightening vacancy rates, rents for both houses and units however were mostly lower over the month. Hobart was the only capital to report higher monthly house rents, rising sharply by 2.4%. Perth rents were steady…
