Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog
"Intelligent Insight"
From The Conversation. Is inequality rising or falling? The answer, if recent public debate is anything to go by, may appear at first to depend on who you ask. Part of the reason why we get such conflicting narratives about whether it’s rising or falling is that economic inequality can be measured in different ways, … Continue reading “Here’s why it’s so hard to say whether inequality is going up or down”
From The New Daily. Income inequality is worsening in Australia, according to comprehensive new research that finds renters, pensioners and students are feeling the pinch while high earners get pay rises. ME bank’s twice-yearly survey of 1500 households, conducted in June and published on Monday, revealed bigger gaps in income, housing and financial worries across the nation. In the … Continue reading “Income divide between rich and poor Australians widening”
Rental Stress is growing, and more property investors are underwater when it comes to covering their mortgage costs on an ongoing basis, so what are the implications for property investment as mortgage rates continue to rise? Welcome to the Property Imperative Weekly to 29th July 2017. We start with our research on property investment, which … Continue reading “Renters Under Pressure – The Property Imperative Weekly 29 Jul 2017”
We know that household debt has never been higher in Australia, but I do not think the true impact of this, especially in a rising interest, low income growth environment is truly understood. We have to look beyond mortgage debt. The latest RBA E2 – Households Finances – Selected Ratios shows that the ratio of … Continue reading “The Household Debt Quagmire”
Does this sound familiar? From The IMF Blog. Think Londoners and New Yorkers have it bad when it comes to sky-high house prices? Residents of Oslo have reason to gripe, too. House prices in the Norwegian capital are among the world’s highest, as measured by the average cost of a home relative to household median … Continue reading “Norway’s House Price Boom”
From The New Daily. Of all the measures of wellbeing of Australia’s workers and families, one has reliably increased over the decades. That is despite droughts, floods, recessions, changes of government, jobless rises and falls, and housing booms and busts. Until now. ‘Household gross disposable income’ quantifies the cash families and individuals receive from all … Continue reading “It’s official. Regular Australians are getting poorer”
From The Conversation. Government strategies to manage population ageing largely assume that older Australians are home owners. There is often an implied association between home ownership and ageing well: that is, older Australians who own homes are seen as having made the right choices and as being less of a budget burden. The problem with … Continue reading “Three reasons the government promotes home ownership for older Australians”
From The New Daily. The Reserve Bank may hold rates for as long as a year, but mortgage borrowers could be punished anyway by rising house prices and gouging by the banks. Australia’s central bank held the official cash rate at 1.5 per cent for the tenth time on Tuesday. It hasn’t moved since a 25 basis point … Continue reading “Banks do what RBA won’t: hike interest rates”
From The New Daily. The Reserve Bank board will be facing record-high debt levels when it decides on Tuesday whether or not to follow other central banks by lifting the official cash rate. Ten years after the global financial crisis – which many trace to the collapse of two Bear Sterns hedge funds in July 2007 … Continue reading “Australian household debt breaks new records”
The latest RBA E2 – Households Finances – Selected Ratios – data has been released. The inexorable rise in debt continues. No wonder mortgage stress is rising. The ratio of household debt to annualised household disposable income , rose to 190.4, the ratio of housing debt to annualised household disposable income rose to 135, and … Continue reading “Household Debt Busts the 190”