Buying or selling a home has always been a high-stakes, high-pressure event. The paperwork, the deadlines, the hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars changing hands. But what most people don’t realise is that those exact conditions also create the perfect hunting ground for cybercriminals. And now, because of artificial intelligence, property scams are becoming…
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has unveiled a new cap on high debt-to-income (DTI) lending – a move designed to keep a lid on riskier borrowing as the housing market gathers price momentum, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne. From February 1, 2026, banks will be restricted to issuing no more than 20% of new…
Annual inflation rose to a 16-month high of 3.8% in October, adding to pressure on the government as it seeks to make savings across the public sector. When governments, whether Commonwealth, state or local, increase spending it adds to inflation. Opinions differ on whether Commonwealth spending makes a significant difference. Opposition finance spokesperson Jane Hume…
Australia’s housing affordability has hit new lows over the past five years, with home values drifting even further out of reach and the share of income needed to pay a mortgage has nearly doubled, according to Cotality’s Housing Affordability Report. Even as mortgage rates have dipped, the cost of servicing a new loan remains stubbornly…
If you’ve been watching Australia’s property market and feeling like the numbers don’t quite add up, you’re right. Refinancing is exploding, new-build lending is falling off a cliff, and investors are quietly staging a comeback. Yet when you dig deeper into the latest data, you start to see a much clearer story about where our…
If you want to understand where Australia’s property market is truly heading, don’t just look at what’s listed; look at what buyers are actually searching for. That’s what Domain’s latest Matching Demand report uncovers by comparing millions of buyer search budgets with the actual prices of properties listed for sale across every capital city. And…
If you own a holiday home or short-stay investment property, you might want to pour yourself a coffee before reading on, because the ATO just dropped a draft ruling that could seriously reshape how deductions work for short-term rentals. With around 250,000 Australian dwellings, about 2% of our housing stock, now operating as holiday or…
Some property market analysts say that the absence of past performance indicates that an area is overdue for growth, while others assure us that strong past performance offers us the best prospects of continued growth. They can’t both be right, so I’ll explain what past performance actually tells us about the future. This table illustrates…
Every now and then, a statistic comes along that perfectly captures where we are in the property cycle, and where we’re heading next. The latest analysis from Canstar, based on newly released ABS Lending Indicators, delivered one of those moments: Almost half a million dollars’ worth of home loans are now being refinanced every single…
Unusually strong home value increases in the month of October coincided with the expansion of the Federal Government’s 5% Deposit Scheme. The policy enables eligible first home buyers to secure a low-deposit home loan without lender’s mortgage insurance. From October 1, it was scaled up to unlimited places and income eligibility, and the price caps…
