Australian median house prices have hit record highs new in every capital city bar Darwin and Perth. According to Domain’s House Price Report for the December quarter latest median house price in Sydney now sits at $1.21 million. Melbourne’s property prices have staged a massive comeback, rising 5.3 per cent in the last three months of 2020,…
House prices in some of Australia’s school catchment areas have soared by as much as 35% over the past 12 months. While our property markets have been generally subdued this year, the top 10 primary and top 10 secondary school catchment zones nationwide all reported house price growth of at least 25% year-on-year, a new…
Why are house prices rising when wage growth is low and unemployment is still high? Just to make things clear… this is not the same question as why have house prices been so resilient during the coronavirus induced recession. House prices are never as volatile as share prices on the stock market but this time…
Australian household debt levels have increased substantially over the past thirty years, with the ratio of household debt to annual disposable income rising from 68% in June 1990 to a recent peak of 188.5% in June 2019. Since June last year, the ratio has reduced slightly to 185.0%. Most of the debt held by households…
Amid unprecedented economic uncertainty, many of us are waiting with bated breath to determine what will happen to the property market in the months ahead. The question on everyone’s lips is “will house prices fall”? What are the Bank’s economists predicting? Predictions from the banks and industry have varied widely. The Commonwealth Bank has predicted…
Australia’s housing sector has turned sharply as a deep economic shock from the COVID–19 pandemic has upended the market. The housing market is driven by owner-occupiers, where affordability and expected affordability are key, and by investors where confidence dominates. How this will play out moving forward was the subject of recent commentary by Westpac in…
Getting onto the property ladder is a difficult task for anyone. However, for Australian women, it seems that the gender pay gap means it would take, on average, 2 years longer to save up for a home loan deposit. OpenAgent have looked at the differences between men and women’s average full-time earnings with data from…
Housing prices are falling in Sydney and Melbourne, so housing must be becoming more affordable — right? Well you’d think that would be the case, but it’s not really as simple as that. A rise in house prices is a mixed blessing. For those who have developed the financial discipline to save a deposit and…
Winter is coming and a cold change has swept across the Hobart property market. What was once a nicely heated Hobart hub has gone off the boil, with CoreLogic figures showing a 0.9 per cent slide of dwelling prices last month. Houses fell 1.2%, while unit growth was only 0.3% in March. Our analysis in…
No one wants to buy at the peak of the property market! Imagine if you buy a property and then a month later property values fall and it takes more than 2 years to recover to the amount you paid for it. That two years of holding costs (interest) for no gain. Would you kick…