This is an edited version of live discussion, with Professor Steve Keen.
Steve Keen is an Australian economist and author, highly critical of neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific, and empirically unsupported. Mainstream economist have in effect damaged society and the planet because of what they don’t know!. There are better ways to think about what’s going on. His latest book The New Economics.
After a week away, we’re back with another episode as we look at the stupidity in the property sector, as some are piling into the investor sector, while others are trapped due to the higher interest rates, and nowhere to go.
Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/
Today’s post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.
If you are buying your home in Sydney’s contentious market, you do not need to stand alone. This is the time you need to have Edwin from Ribbon Property Consultants standing along side you.
Buying property, is both challenging and adversarial. The vendor has a professional on their side.
Emotions run high – price discovery and price transparency are hard to find – then there is the wasted time and financial investment you make.
Edwin understands your needs. So why not engage a licensed professional to stand alongside you. With RPC you know you have: experience, knowledge, and master negotiators, looking after your best interest.
Shoot Ribbon an email on info@ribbonproperty.com.au & use promo code: DFA-WTW/MARTIN to receive your 10% DISCOUNT OFFER.
Data from my surveys, as discussed this past week, along with other market data shows we have a very divided housing market, with on one side of the ledger many households under significant pressure and begin forced to sell up, while watching their property values slide, while on the other side property investors are still piling in competing with owner occupied buyers, especially at the lower end of the market and bidding prices higher. Actually of course there are many micro markets across the country, and so any headline “data” on rises or falls mask important differences. Housing isn’t just the great Australian barbecue-stopper. It’s our greatest pain point, too. All this only days after Australia’s GDP figures grew at the lowest rate in three decades, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic, and as traders push out rate cut expectations well into next year.
So today I will be looking at the latest signals from the data relating to mortgage prisoners, forced sales, credit growth and investor activity, to provide context for the misleading headlines we see on the property portals.
http://www.martinnorth.com/
Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/
Today’s post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.
If you are buying your home in Sydney’s contentious market, you do not need to stand alone. This is the time you need to have Edwin from Ribbon Property Consultants standing along side you.
Buying property, is both challenging and adversarial. The vendor has a professional on their side.
Emotions run high – price discovery and price transparency are hard to find – then there is the wasted time and financial investment you make.
Edwin understands your needs. So why not engage a licensed professional to stand alongside you. With RPC you know you have: experience, knowledge, and master negotiators, looking after your best interest.
Shoot Ribbon an email on info@ribbonproperty.com.au & use promo code: DFA-WTW/MARTIN to receive your 10% DISCOUNT OFFER.
This is the fifth part in a series of posts which deep dives into our latest survey results, with a focus on overall financial stress across families, which is rising further.
See the first part, where we describe our approach here: https://youtu.be/3oidJ_XKgAE
The second part on mortgage stress is here: https://youtu.be/6g6cb1mU2zQ
The third part on rental stress is here: https://youtu.be/ZZ0OyEFaplM
The fourth part on investor stress is here: https://youtu.be/JF0FuwzQSSI
The full 2,000 post code series is available by subscription from our Patreon channel below.
If you want details of a particular post code, drop it in the comments below, and I will endeavour to add it to a later show.
This is the fourth part in a series of posts which deep dives into our latest survey results, with a focus on investor stress, which is rising further.
See the first part, where we describe our approach here: https://youtu.be/3oidJ_XKgAE
The second part on mortgage stress is here: https://youtu.be/6g6cb1mU2zQ
The third part on rental stress is here: https://youtu.be/ZZ0OyEFaplM
The full 2,000 post code series is available by subscription from our Patreon channel below.
If you want details of a particular post code, drop it in the comments below, and I will endeavour to add it to a later show.
http://www.martinnorth.com/
Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/
Yesterday the ABS released the latest data on dwellings approved and they fell 0.3 per cent in April, after a 2.7 per cent rise in March, according to the seasonally adjusted data after just 13,078 new homes were signed off for construction.
Looing at the mix, Approvals for private houses fell 1.6 per cent. While approvals for private sector dwellings excluding houses also fell 1.1 per cent in April in seasonally adjusted terms.
In the year to April, just 163,493 new dwelling permits were issued, a level which has been broadly consistent since December as surging home building costs and elevated interest rates batter construction activity. The annual result was vastly outpaced by population growth over the same period, which soared by 626,871 mostly due to surging net migration levels. From July 1, Labor is targeting the construction of 1.2 million well-located homes over five years, requiring a 12 month rolling average of 240,000 new homes.
Aprils figure is well short of the 20,000 homes that need to be constructed each month if the country is to hit the federal government’s target of building 1.2 million new homes in the space of five years, starting in July.
So the chronic housing supply issue will remain a problem and put upward pressure on home prices and rents, leading to higher inflation, and so higher interest rates for longer.
So unless things change, the gap between the supply of dwellings and meeting demand will continue to grow, driving home prices and rents higher, and pushing inflation higher which leads to higher interest rates and mortgage costs.
Step one should be to trim migration meaningfully back to bring the supply and demand back into better balance, remembering that on capita we are still currently building MORE dwellings than other western countries, as I discussed with Tarric Brooker recently. There is a strategic path to tackle the issues we face, but it seems to be politically impossible so more people will struggle to find a place to live – something which should be a basic human right, and a priority for Government.
http://www.martinnorth.com/
Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/
Today’s post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.
Australia is paying way too much for its home-grown gas, as the over-exporting of gas has driven East Coast gas prices 400% higher than historical average prices leading to higher inflation and a stalled energy transition. This is a huge impost on living standards via direct bill shocks and spills over to energy-intensive manufacturing, which includes building materials, making the housing crisis even worse.
Yet there’s more as The Australia Institute, an independent public policy think tank based in Canberra, just published a report titled Australia’s great gas giveaway – How Australia gives gas to multinational corporations for free.
In addition to exposing Australians to the full international price of gas (yes gas produced in Australia and shipped off shore by huge international companies) due to stupid Government policy, the Institute says that Australian governments charge no royalties on 56% of the gas that is exported from Australia. Over the last four years, multinational companies made $149 billion exporting gas they got for free.
If royalties had been charged on this gas, at least $13.3 billion in revenue could have been raised.
Australia exports LNG from 10 installations. Six of these projects—four of the five in Western Australia and both in the Northern Territory—pay no state or federal royalties. Australia exports 56% of its gas through these facilities.
Sure, the industry is subject to taxes – which are distinct from royalties – including income tax and the petroleum resource rent tax levied on profits. But Institute said the oil and gas companies should be paying royalties as well as taxes on profits and a failure to do so consistently meant Australians were missing out on a fair return on their resources.
ACT Senator David Pocock said the gas industry was taking part in “state-sanctioned daylight robbery”. “We are seeing a betrayal of Australians and our future by the major parties. We are seeing state capture by the gas industry,” he said. “They are absolute leeches on this country and this has to end.”
http://www.martinnorth.com/
Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/
