Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog
"Intelligent Insight"
From The Sydney Morning Herald. Deloitte Access Economics’ quarterly business outlook, released today, predicts the official cash rate of 1.5 per cent will climb slowly in 2018 and 2019 to reach 3 per cent in the early 2020s. The Reserve Bank was well aware “interest rates are now a massively more potent weapon for slowing … Continue reading “‘This thing’s gonna blow’: Top economists’ interest rate warning”
From The Conversation. In the first article reviewing The Conversation’s many articles on housing issues, the commentary about fiscal and supply-side issues was consistent. The same is not true for affordable housing due to the diversity of affordability issues. The issues have to do with the complexity and scale of the affordability problems and possible … Continue reading “Affordable housing, finger-pointing politics and possible policy solutions”
The Conversation has published many articles by Australia’s foremost academics on policies that affect housing. In the lead-up to expected announcements in the federal budget in May, we review the arguments in the articles since January 2016 – 81 were identified, of which 58 concerned housing policy. This article focuses on the most frequently mentioned … Continue reading “What housing issues should the budget tackle? This is what our experts say”
From WSWS.Org. The Reserve Bank resisted calls for an interest rate hike last week, amid growing fears that the continuing rise of house prices is creating the conditions for a crisis across the property market that would have far broader ramifications. On Tuesday, the bank’s governor, Philip Lowe, announced that rates would remain at a … Continue reading “Mounting concerns over Australian housing bubble”
From The AFR. Ask respected property analyst Martin North what form the coming downturn in the housing market might take and “orderly” is not the description he uses. Instead North anticipates a much more significant downturn in the investor-driven, debt-laden markets like Sydney and Melbourne. “Orderly” is how S&P Global Ratings director Sharad Jain described … Continue reading “Housing correction ‘won’t be orderly’”
Following the recent coverage of our mortgage stress analysis (light it seems is now dawning on regulators, industry commentators and others that household debt is a real and growing issue), one question we get asked is – yes, but surely the banks have guidelines on affordability and serviceability, minimum assumed rate 2%+ above current rates, … Continue reading “Why The Gap Between Bank Serviceability And Real Life?”
The Australian Financial Review covered the latest DFA mortgage stress research today, even if they managed to scramble the data in the chart I provided. Here is the correct data. This is what the AFR wrote: Household debt is rocketing towards 190 per cent of disposable incomes, ramping up pressure on the Reserve Bank of … Continue reading “Malcolm Turnbull backs RBA warning as household debt hits new record”
From The Conversation. Climbing house prices seem to scare people but houses are relatively more affordable today than they were in 1990, it’s actually interest-rate risk that’s the bigger problem for first home buyers. If you look at latest numbers on house prices, as a measure of affordability, they use a “median measure” – that … Continue reading “Houses aren’t more unaffordable for first home buyers, but they are riskier”
From The NewDaily. Latest property price figures have given home owners reason to celebrate and first home buyers even more reason for despair. Latest data from CoreLogic Home shows prices in Australia’s main cities have leapt 3.7 per cent since the start of the year, with Sydney and Melbourne predictably higher than the national average. Residential … Continue reading “Property prices continue to soar in an already hot market”
In past years we have been highlighting the misaligned policy settings which have allowed home prices to balloon, household debt to soar, interest rates to slide and investors to gain more than a third of the market, higher than UK or USA. As banks have continued to lend and inflate their balance sheets and bolster … Continue reading “Think The Unthinkable – The Property Crash We Have To Have?”