National home lending has continued to fall over October despite the easing of severe lockdown restrictions in Sydney and Melbourne. The outlook for lending activity remains mixed with rising affordability barriers and the satisfaction of pent-up demand acting to reduce home-buying activity. The ABS reports that the value of home loans seasonally adjusted (excluding land…
Where is the property market now? What’s driving poor affordability? How big is the risk of financial instability? What can be done about both issues? And what’s the outlook for home prices? These and other questions were raised and answered by Dr. Shane Oliver, Head of Investment Strategy and Economics and Chief Economist at AMP…
The recently released ANZ CoreLogic Housing Affordability Report showed wide-scale declines in housing affordability through the current upswing. At the national level, the ratio of housing values to household incomes reached a new record high in June, as did the number of years it takes to save a deposit, and the portion of income required…
Saving for a house deposit could take on average almost 20 years in some suburbs, according to startling new research by Finder. Analysing property prices and incomes in each of Australia’s capital cities, and in Australia’s local government areas (LGAs), Finder determined where saving for a home is the most challenging. Unsurprisingly, Sydney was the…
What are the key longer-term implications flowing from the Coronavirus pandemic? What is the biggest risk for the economy in the current situation? These and other questions were raised and answered by Dr. Shane Oliver, Head of Investment Strategy and Economics and Chief Economist at AMP in his recent Insight. Here’s what he said…. The…
The Australian economy continues to adjust from the covid flattening of 2020 with wages predictably bouncing back from the record low growth levels of last year. The latest ABS Wage Index reports that wages seasonally adjusted increased by 0.6% over the September quarter for an annual increase of 2.2%. The September quarter increase follows a…
While rental rates are rising at the fastest pace since 2008, a gap has opened up between the rate of growth in house rents compared with unit rents, with unit precincts across the inner city areas of some capital cities recording a much weaker performance through the COVID period to-date. Overall, unit rents have risen…
Read my lips – no RBA rate rise any time soon. Despite what the many financial journalists, economists, market analysts, and various click baiters have said over the last few weeks today Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe made his position very clear – “the latest data and forecasts do not warrant an increase in the…
The topic of rising inflation and its potential impact on interest rates has been dominating the financial press over the past few weeks. The bond markets expect that higher inflation readings will force central banks to raise interest rates. It’s my opinion that higher inflation is likely to be temporary. And it’s also useful to…
Despite booming property markets around Australia, there are some suburbs bucking the trend, with house prices falling by almost 13 per cent in some postcodes over the past year, according to Domain’s latest House Price Report. Not surprisingly, some of the biggest house price falls were in Melbourne where which was lockdown for longer than…
