Three of the big four banks have hiked fixed rates again, as the cost of fixed-rate funding continues to surge north. Australia’s largest bank, CBA, recently increased fixed rates by up to 0.50 percentage points for owner-occupiers paying principal and interest, but all the way up to 0.90 percentage points for some investors. This is…
Making a profit renovating a property seems like a very attractive proposition. Buy low, renovate cheap, and add substantial value is the aim of the game. It sounds simple enough, right? While there is always a strong demand for renovated properties – as there are always people wanting to move into a property that has…
Addressing the critical undersupply of rental properties must be a key policy of whoever wins the upcoming Federal Election according to the Property Investment Professionals of Australia (PIPA). Residential rental vacancy rates have hit 16-year record lows due to investor activity being well below average over the past five years in particular, according to new…
Our rental markets are on the move. CoreLogic’s recently released Quarterly Rental Review shows the national rental index increased 1% over the month of March and 2.6% over the March quarter. Continuing the trend seen since the onset of the pandemic, regional dwelling rents outpaced growth in capital city dwelling rents over the quarter, with…
Mortgage rates are on the rise in Australia as funding costs and speculation about an impending RBA cash rate rise in the next few months puts pressure on banks. While there was no change in the cash rate at yesterday’s RBA meeting for April, rate hikes are coming. The big four bank economists have forecast…
New research from Commonwealth Bank and Deloitte reveals that financial abuse costs victims, and the Australian economy, more than $10 billion per year. The staggering research found that over 380,000 women and 240,000 men were subjected to financial abuse by a former or current partner in 2020. That is 1 in 30 women and 1…
A curious feature of the Australian tax system is “bracket creep”. Taxpayers whose income climbs by no more than prices (inflation) get no increase in their living standards. Instead, they see more and more of their income pushed into their highest tax brackets, or to even higher tax brackets. It means the government’s income from…
The value of Australia’s residential property market has surged to $9.9trillion after growing at the fastest annual pace on record. The Australian Bureau of Statistics said residential property prices rose 23.7 percent through 2021, meaning that the collective value of the wealth of property owners increased by $2 trillion in just one year alone! This…
Vocal market commentator and fund manager, Chris Joye wrote in the AFR in November last year that Australian house prices could fall by 15% to 25% after the RBA starts increasing interest rates (here’s a copy of that article). Of course, there are many property doomsayers that perpetually (and often inaccurately) predict property market crashes….
Australia’s latest inquiry into housing affordability and supply provides an update on some of the key issues weighing on homeownership across Australia. The report provides sixteen recommendations that can loosely be split into either supply or demand-side factors that influence housing prices. Across its 200+ pages, the report provides a valuable summary of the evidence…
