Category: Social Trends

The working poor: one-in-five households being left behind

From The New Daily.

It was heartening on Thursday to see job ads continue to tick up, rising 1.7 per cent in the three months to the end of May, or 9.2 per cent in the past year.

But before we get too excited, this week’s census data raises real concerns that the kinds of jobs being created aren’t paying enough for workers to live on.

The alarming fact is that one-fifth of households in 2016 recorded a gross income, including all government benefits, of less than $650 a week.

To put that in context, that’s less than the full couple rate for the aged pension ($670 a week) and less than a full-time worker on the minimum wage ($673).

Think about that for a minute. If 800,000 households say they have income of less than $650, and if that figure by definition excludes retiree couples living on the full pension, or on a higher combination of pension and super, we’ve got a huge problem.

The census, for some reason, compares the number of households on $650 or less with households falling under the same threshold five years ago.

That’s a bit strange, because the consumer price index has risen a cumulative 9.85 per cent in that time. So you’d need $714 today to buy the same goods and services as in 2011.

For middle Australia, that’s proving less of a problem – real wages are not rising as quickly as GDP growth, which means companies are taking a larger share of growth as profits, but at least they’re ahead of inflation.

So while the economy expanded 6.2 per cent in real terms over five years, the median personal income was up 4.6 per cent , and median household incomes are up 6.1 per cent. Not great, but a lot better than for the sub-$650 group.

The Australian Council of Social Services estimates that 800,000 households are in housing stress – spending more than 30 per cent of their income on housing – and while that’s not an exact fit with the sub-$650 group, the overlap would be very large.

 Who are we forgetting?

When Bob Menzies spoke of a ‘forgotten people’ in his famous 1942 speech, he meant a middle class who were not wealthy, but neither backed by the then-huge union movement.

Well, times change. The census reveals an alarmingly large cohort of people forgotten for other reasons.

They are left behind by a skyrocketing housing market, stuck in the rut of under-employment, attacked as a drain on the budget or for not paying more tax, seeing their penalty rates cut, or forced to jump through undignified job-seeker hoops.

So yes, it’s natural for the political and media classes to welcome an uptick in job ads. But we have to ask if that’s going to do anything to lift the fortunes of the gradually swelling ranks of working poor.

This year’s census summary was released under the headline “Census reveals: we’re a fast changing nation”.

When one in five households live on less that the age pension and less than a single minimum wage, “a fast polarising nation” might be more apt.

Eight rate hikes in two years? Our economy should be so lucky!

From The New Daily.

A widely-misreported warning of eight rate hikes in two years would in fact be good news for the economy, according to the man who made the prediction.

Dr John Edwards, former economic advisor to Paul Keating, former RBA board member and former chief economist at HSBC, struck fear into the hearts of mortgage holders this week by supposedly forecasting that the official cash rate would rise from 1.5 to 3.5 per cent by the end of 2019.

He actually wrote that the RBA would be forced to lift rates to 3.5 per cent only if the Australian economy substantially improved.

“This implies that within three years Australia’s economic world has returned to more-or-less normal, with wages growth of 3.5 per cent, inflation of 2.5 per cent, and output growth of 3 per cent,” Dr Edwards said.

He admitted such a rosy outcome might never eventuate.

“The pace of tightening will anyway be governed by the strength of the economy,” he wrote.

“If household spending weakness, if the long expected firming of non-mining business investment is further delayed, if the Australian dollar strengthens, if employment growth is persistently weak, then the trajectory of rate rises will be less steep and the pace less rapid.”

The piece prompted warnings that households would be forced to pay hundreds more a year in mortgage repayments, but Dr Edwards himself feared no such disastrous outcome: “The increases will cause less distress than will be widely observed.”

He said this was because housing interest payments were at 7 per cent of household disposable income, compared to 9.5 per cent in 2011 and 11 per cent just before the US-triggered global financial crisis.

These figures ignore the enormous impact of principal repayments. But the latest census data confirmed his point, showing that most parts of Australia were paying less overall on their mortgages than five years ago.

Dr Stephen Koukoulas, former economic adviser to Julia Gillard, said the economy would have to be “on fire” to necessitate eight rate rises, which would be “fantastic” news for workers.

He said GDP growth would have to be closer to 5 per cent, inflation 4 per cent and unemployment 3 per cent for the RBA to push the cash rate up by 200 basis points.

“If it comes to pass, it’ll be because the economy is in an inflation-inspired boom,” Dr Koukoulas told The New Daily.

Such a boom would help regular Australians because inflation is largely driven by household consumption, and “you need wages growth to underpin household consumption”.

A key factor is that the RBA sets the cash rate to target core inflation of 2 to 3 per cent over the medium term.

Because inflation has been below target for so many years, the central bank might allow it to sit at 3.2 or 3.3 per cent for a similar period of time, Dr Koukoulas said.

“There is a serious discussion among central banks that because of the hangover of the GFC, with low inflation still being recorded, let’s tolerate a year or two of above target inflation and let the unemployment rate get back down a little bit.”

Core inflation would only sit persistently above 3 per cent over the next two years if workers were “swimming in cash”, offsetting higher mortgage payments, which Dr Koukoulas said was an “improbable” but “fantastic” scenario.

Tom Kennedy, economist at JP Morgan, saw no such wage boom on the horizon.

In a research note on Thursday, he said next month’s minimum hourly wage increase of 3.3 per cent would be wholly offset by the much-publicised reduction in Sunday penalty rates.

Structural changes, such as underemployment and the increasing share of lower-paid services jobs, meant that the unemployment rate (currently 5.5 per cent) “most likely understates the slack” in the labour market, Mr Kennedy wrote.

Workers would have to get substantially more jobs and hours to enjoy wage rises, he said.

Australians are working longer so they can pay off their mortgage debt

From The Conversation.

Rising mortgage debt is affecting everything from employment to spending, as Australians approach retirement, our study finds. Higher levels of housing debt among pre-retirees are linked to them working for longer.

We found for a home owner aged 45-64 years, the chances of being employed are around 40% higher for every additional A$100,000 in mortgage debt owed against the family home.

There’s also a link between house price changes and household spending. For every A$100,000 increase in the value of a person’s house, annual household spending of home owners increased by around A$1,500. These home owners are willing to increase their spending because they’re able to borrow more against their home to finance it.

Long-run trends in mortgage debt

Australians are paying down their mortgages later in life. The percentage of home owners aged 25 years or over who are carrying a mortgage debt climbed from 42% to 56% between 1990 and 2013.

Mortgage debt burdens among pre-retirees have soared. For home owners aged 45-54 years, the incidence of mortgage debt has nearly doubled from 36% to 71%. Among those aged 55-64 years, this incidence has more than tripled from 14% to 44%.

These trends reflect at least two things. Higher housing cost burdens have resulted in a decline in home ownership rates among young people. Those able to access home ownership are doing so later in life and by taking on higher levels of debt relative to their incomes.

Flexible mortgage products also now allow home owners to unlock wealth stored in the family home whenever required, and not just their retirement years.

Higher mortgage debts, longer working lives

Australians are working longer because they are paying down their mortgages later in life.

Our modelling, based on the 2001-2010 Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey data, shows that pre-retirees aged 55-64 years are 18% more likely to continue working for every A$100,000 increase in their mortgage debt.

On the one hand, unexpected increases in housing prices could have caused buyers considering home ownership to borrow more in order to buy a house, and encouraged homeowners to spend more by withdrawing the equity from their homes. These mortgagors then have to extend their working lives to meet higher mortgage repayments.

On the other hand, longer life expectancy may have encouraged many Australians to plan longer working lives. Carrying higher levels of mortgage debt later in life could be a financial tactic to finance their spending over a longer lifespan.

Borrowing more, spending more?

Our analysis found some differences between subgroups of home owners and between periods preceding and following the global financial crisis.

Before the global financial crisis highly indebted home buyers were more prepared to use their mortgages in order to bridge the gap between spending plans and income. After the crisis, home buyers with large mortgages were less willing to use their mortgages in this way.

In contrast, the spending plans of indebted households who both own their home and a second investment property seem more sensitive to house price movements since the global financial crisis. Property investors with mortgage debt increased their average yearly spending after the crisis from A$1,700 to over A$2,800 for every A$100,000 increase in their housing wealth.

On the other hand, for home owners with no investment properties, average yearly spending tightened from A$1,700 to A$1,500 for every A$100,000 increase in their housing wealth. This suggests investors with debt are not so risk-averse as other homeowners.

Housing, productivity and the economy

Mortgage debts have important economy-wide effects through interactions with labour markets and consumer spending.

Ageing is often associated with lower rates of labour force participation and declining physical and mental health, which can result in reduced productivity growth. If people are extending their working lives to repay higher mortgage debt, this could mitigate some of the productivity consequences of population ageing, albeit at the expense of greater exposure to debt in later life.

When real house values are rising, home owners and property investors are able to borrow more against their home to finance their spending. In the short run this can help offset the effect of stagnant wages (on their spending) and thereby sustain growth momentum in the economy.

But if wages fail to pick up, these higher levels of debt can be a drag on growth. High levels of indebtedness also increase exposure to house price and interest rate risk, and pose a threat to macroeconomic stability.

Our research makes a compelling case for considering housing differently, as essential economic infrastructure. Housing needs to be re- positioned from the periphery to a central place within national economic policy debates. This could be crucial to an understanding of how our housing system can promote rather than curb economic growth in Australia.

Authors: Rachel Ong,  Deputy Director, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, Curtin University; Gavin Wood, Emeritus Professor of Housing and Housing Studies, RMIT University; Kadir Atalay, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney; Melek Cigdem-Bayram, Research Fellow, RMIT University

The census confirms Australia’s great housing swindle

From The New Daily.

The new census data released on Tuesday should infuriate young Australians because it shows definitively how the housing market is being rigged against them.

It dispels for good the myth that a shortage of dwellings is what’s causing house prices to rocket beyond their reach.

The key myth-busting statistic is the average number of people per dwelling, which has not budged an inch in the five years since the last census. It’s staying at 2.6 which is where it was back in 2000 well before the house price boom began.

Breaking down that number, the census shows the number of occupied dwellings increased by 6.8 per cent over five years, which is less than population growth over the same period: 8.8 per cent.

However, the number of unoccupied dwellings grew at 11.3 per cent over five years. That equates to 105,000 more empty dwellings since 2011.

Those numbers explain the apparent paradox of ‘people per dwelling’ remaining static, while renters and home buyers experience a tightening market.

And it is getting tighter, as shown by the rental data. Median rents increased by 17.5 per cent over the period, outstripping average income growth of 13.7 per cent over the same period.

That pushed more people into ‘rental stress’, defined as requiring them to spend more than 30 per cent of their disposable income on rent. In 2011 the proportion was 10.4 per cent, but that has now risen to 11.5 per cent.

Home rage

So the dwellings are there, but either not on the market or increasingly unaffordable if they are.

What’s maddening about those two problems is that they are caused by politicians, not ‘the market’ as the pollies always try to pretend.

There are two categories of market participants that have led to this situation.

One is overseas property investors, dominated by buyers from mainland China. They are permitted to buy only new dwellings – a rule that is supposed to stimulate housing supply and put downward pressure on prices.

In reality, there are two major exemptions. They can buy homes for their adult children to live in during periods of study in Australia, and, more recently, to house children as young as six who enrol in Australian primary schools.

But the investors who are leaving properties vacant aren’t interested in accessing education. They buy off-the-plan apartments as a store of wealth, much like giant gold bars.

If China suffers an economic or geopolitical collapse, which many commentators think likely, some of their fortune will be sitting in high-rise towers in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane.

The second class of market participants operating in a decidedly non-free-market way are local investors seeking to minimise tax through negative gearing and profit from the 50 per cent discount that applies to any capital gains they make.

Those investors are subsidised by other taxpayers to outbid would-be owner-occupiers.

Over time, the toxic combination of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount have returned tens of billions of dollars to generally older, wealthier Australians, thereby increasing the tax bills of younger Australians.

Oh yes, and pushing property prices way out of reach.

That is turning younger Australians into a generation of renters. Tuesday’s census figures confirm this ongoing trend, with the percentage of Australians renting rising from 29.6 to 31 per cent since 2011.

Put together, these numbers are absurd, inequitable, and a drag on the economy because of the ever-increasing proportion of wages being handed by young Australia to the bank-share-owning and cash-deposit-holding older Australians.

If young Australians weren’t furious before the census data came out, they should be now.

Home ownership remains strong in Australia but it masks other problems: Census data

From The Conversation.

The great Australia dream of owning your own home is still alive despite the various problems plaguing housing affordability, new Census data shows. Even though the overall home ownership trend remains strong, it’s masking other issues.

The latest 2016 Census data assesses what the national home ownership and rental rates are and how these vary location. It also gives us a picture of mortgage and rental costs.

Comparing home ownership rates since the 2011 Census, there’s a slow but steady decline in home ownership rates overall – down by 2.9% from 64.9% of all Australian households in 2006, to 62.0% in 2016. However, 7.4% of households did not state their housing tenure in the 2016 Census. This accounts for some of the variation in reported rates of home ownership decline.

This contraction is nowhere of the scale of equivalent falls in home ownership in the US and UK and New Zealand over the same period.

What’s more interesting than the overall trend, is the greater decline in outright home ownership, involving no mortgage debt, from 31.0% to 29.6% between 2011 and 2016. There’s also a lesser decline in home owners who are purchasing with mortgage debt 33.3% in 2011 compared with 32.4% in 2016.

The opportunity households now have to borrow against their mortgage loans for spending undoubtedly accounts for some of this change. Also contributing to this is home purchasers are less likely to reach retirement age with no remaining mortgage debt, in the same numbers as previous eras.

Another aspect of housing affordability is masked by these numbers – the wide variation in being able to purchase a home according to age and income. Recent evidence indicates would-be-home-owners try various means including very high mortgage debt and moving to outer urban locations away from employment and into smaller dwellings, to be able to buy a house. Some even delay having kids.

Census figures show that for people wanting to purchase a home, a change in state or city location may be an option. According to the data Darwin was the most expensive city to buy in, whereas Hobart was the cheapest for home purchasers.

For households across the income spectrum, 7.2% of purchasers are paying more than 30% of their income on mortgage costs, the data shows. This figure is likely to be far higher among the lowest income (40% of households) for whom such costs place them in housing poverty.

Given the national obsession with investment in private rental, it’s no surprise that the proportion of all Australian households now renting has also increased. Census 2016 results show the private rental sector grew in size, from 20.2% in 2006, to 22.0% in 2011 and to 23.6% in 2016.

In 2016 a total of 2,089,633 Australian households rented privately, either from real estate agents or private landlords.

The growth of the private rental sector largely reflects the high costs of home purchase. Many households who rent have a relative lack of security and control over rental increases.

For those unable to pay rent in the private market, social housing is likely to provide little relief. Census data shows overall rates of social housing declining from 4.7% in 2006 to 4.0% in 2016. In this context, the growth in rates of homelessness in the last decade is perhaps not surprising.

For Indigenous Australians, the housing picture is different. Census 2016 data show among households in which at least one resident is Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, 12.2% are outright owners, 25.9% are purchaser owners, 32.4% are renting privately. Around a fifth of households, 21.5%, live in social housing, reflecting targeted social housing programs in metropolitan, rural and regional areas.

Overall, home ownership has not changed as dramatically in the last decade, as some would have anticipated. However, it’s likely with the labour market being what it is and the adaptations people are making to try and buy a home, there may be longer-term problems to be seen in future.

Excessive household debt, polarisation of cities into low and high income earning areas and deepening family housing constraints indicate these Census figures likely mask bigger problems. This may translate over time into a more costly social problem, as increasing proportions of households require housing assistance of some form. Australian society could become even more divided on the basis of housing wealth and opportunity, if these trends continue, as we expect they will.

Authors: Wendy Stone, Associate Professor, Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology; Kath Hulse, Research Professor, Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology; Margaret Reynolds, Researcher, Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology; Terry Burke, Professor of Housing Studies, Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology

Census Shows How We Are Changing

The early data from the latest census, released by the ABS today highlights the momentum in population growth across the nation.

The 2016 Census counted 23,717,421 people in Australia on Census night, which included 23,401,892 people who usually live in Australia– an 8.8 per cent increase from 2011. On Census night, over 600,000 Australians were travelling overseas.

In the last 10 years the population has been growing by  1.7% each year, compared with 1.4% in the prior decade.

1.3 million new migrants have come to call Australia home since 2011, hailing from some of the 180 countries of birth recorded in the Census, with China (191,000) and India (163,000) being the most common countries of birth of our new arrivals.

Strong migration, plus births, and people living to a great age are all putting upward pressure on the numbers.  This momentum is expected to continue putting more pressure on infrastructure and creating more congestion especially in our major urban centres.

The Census found that New South Wales remains our most populous state, with 7,480,228 people counted, ahead of Victoria in second (5,926,624 people) and Queensland in third (4,703,193 people).

Yet it’s the home of the nation’s capital – the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) – that experienced the largest population growth of any state or territory over the past five years, adding more than 40,000 new residents – an increase of 11 per cent.

Located approximately 45 kilometres from the Perth CBD in the woody hills of the Darling Scarp, Serpentine – Jarrahdale showed the fastest regional growth in the country, with a population increase of 51 per cent to 27,000 people – up from 18,000 people in 2011. Gungahlin, a thriving northern area in the ACT, continues to flourish and is now home to 71,000 people, up from 47,000 in 2011 – an increase of 50 per cent.

Stretching from the beaches of Bondi and Manly to the Blue Mountains, Greater Sydney once again came in as Australia’s largest population centre, with 4,823,991 people, with around 1,656 new people calling the Harbour City home every week since the last Census. However, the cultural hub of Greater Melbourne is closing in fast with 4,485,211 people, increasing by around 1,859 people every week since 2011.

The average age – the median –  has moved up from 36 years to 38 and there are more people over the age of 65 years, with an increase from 14% to 16% of the population. The 2016 Census found that there are 664,473 additional people aged 65 and over since 2011. The demographic shift here is significant in terms of healthcare, aged care and wealth management.

Median weekly household incomes rose from $1,234 in 2011 to $1,438 in 2016. The average individual income was $577, and is now $662.

The dwellings data is interesting, in that we see a 6.8% rise in the number of occupied dwellings between 2011 and 2016, from 7.7 million to 8.3 million. The average monthly mortgage repayment is $1,755 today, compared with $1,800 in 2011, whilst rents have risen by 17.5%, from a weekly $285 to $335.  There was little change in the mix between families, single persons and group households. There was no change to the average number of people in each dwelling, at 2.6 and the average number of bedrooms remained at 3.1.

More households are renting, up from the previous census in 2011, from 27% in 2011 to 31% in 2016. Clearly the rise in property values relative to income and poor housing affordability (refer population growth above) makes it more difficult to enter the market, to say nothing of the greater penetration of property investors.  We also see that apartments, flats and townhouses have increased as a share of all housing dwellings from 24% to 27% over the past decade.

The cultural mix in the country is changing, look back half a century and around 18% of Australians were born overseas. The latest data shows this now stands at 26%.

The ethic mix has also changed. Back in 1966 one third of these people were born in England but today this is 15%. The proportion from New Zealand also decreased over the same period from 9.1% to 8.4%.

In contrast, the proportion of overseas-born Australians born in China has jumped from 6% to 8.3% and from India from 5.6% to 7.4%.

Finally, a greater proportion of the population has no specific religious affiliation. The proportion of people reporting no religion increased to 30 per cent in 2016 – up from 22 per cent five years ago and nearly double the 16 per cent in 2001.

Older Australians face housing crisis

From The New Daily.

Australian retirees will face a housing crisis within 15 years unless urgent action is taken, according to the Council on the Ageing.

The lobby group for seniors hosted a policy summit in Canberra in recent days where it drew attention to the impact on older Australians of rising prices, rising rents, huge mortgage debt and the scarcity of suitable homes.

The assumption that Australians retire in a home they own underpins the nation’s superannuation and pension systems, but summit attendees heard this could be under serious threat in as little as 10 to 15 years.

Keynote speaker John Daley, CEO of the Grattan Institute, warned that the looming housing crisis is a “ticking time bomb” for this demographic.

“We must address these issues immediately if we want to stand a fighting chance to mitigate the severity of the looming housing affordability crisis and to safeguard the future of older Australians before it is too late,” Mr Daley said.

The summit heard a key threat is that more Australians are entering retirement with mortgage debt, which they typically pay off in a lump sum from their superannuation.

Others enter retirement while still renting, which radically increases the amount of disposable income they need to cover monthly expenses.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, which represents both for-profit and non-profit funds, has estimated that couples who rent for life in the eight capital cities will need at least $1 million to retire comfortably.

In Sydney, a renting couple would require a lump sum at retirement of $1.16 million, almost double the $640,000 a couple who own their home debt-free would need, ASFA found.

The huge disparity is due solely to the ongoing costs of renting. For example, a 65-year-old Sydney couple who own their home will spend — if they live comfortably — about $60,000 a year, compared to almost $80,000 for a renting couple.

The problem is even worse for age pensioners. The 2017 Rental Affordability Snapshot report by Anglicare Australia found only 6 per cent of the market was affordable for a single older person living on the age pension.

The forum also discussed the growing incidence of homelessness among older people, especially women; and the implications for age pensioners of unaffordable rental properties in the cities.

COTA chief executive Ian Yates said older Australians are increasingly disadvantaged by the lack of supply of affordable housing that meets the physical needs of older residents.

“Older Australians are increasingly falling through the cracks in the growing housing affordability and supply challenge, with a growing number of older Australians needing to rent, rather than owning a home outright,” Mr Yates said.

“We are already starting to see rates of home ownership by older Australians decline, and this is forecast to drop even further in the next 10-15 years.

“This trend is already exerting extra pressure on the rental market and on many older Australians who are struggling to pay their rent, while also juggling other rising expenses like energy.

“There is a whole group of people currently in their 50s and 60s who will be retiring as renters, or if they are lucky enough to own a house, facing the prospect of retiring with a mortgage.”

An Australian researcher has estimated that anyone who doesn’t have a mortgage by the age of 45 will probably be renting in retirement, due to price growth outpacing savings, the risks of sickness and unemployment, and the difficulty of convincing a bank to provide a home loan.

The COTA summit also heard from Dr Ian Winter at the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute; Judith Yates from the University of Sydney; Jeff Fiedler from Housing for the Aged Action Group; and Paul McBride from the Department of Social Services.

Many of the same themes were covered in a recent report by consulting firm KPMG. It confirmed that it will be very difficult for older Australians to be debt free in later years, largely because of housing costs.

Bust the regional city myths and look beyond the ‘big 5’ for a $378b return

From The Conversation.

Investing in regional cities’ economic performance makes good sense. Contrary to popular opinion, new researchout today shows regional cities generate national economic growth and jobs at the same rate as big metropolitan cities. They are worthy of economic investment in their own right – not just on social and equity grounds.

However, for regional cities to capture their potential A$378 billion output to 2031, immediate action is needed. Success will see regional cities in 2031 produce twice as much as all the new economy industries produce in today’s metropolitan cities.

Drawing on lessons from the UK, the collaborative work by the Regional Australia Institute and the UK Centre for Cities spotlights criteria and data all Australian cities can use to help get themselves investment-ready.

Build on individual strengths

The Regional Australia Institute’s latest work confirms that city population size does not determine economic performance. There is no significant statistical difference between the economic performance of Australia’s big five metro cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide) and its 31 regional cities in historical output, productivity and participation rates.

So, regional cities are as well positioned to create investment returns as their big five metro cousins. The same rules apply – investment that builds on existing city strengths and capabilities will produce returns.

No two cities have the same strengths and capabilities. However, regional cities do fall into four economic performance groups – gaining, expanding, slipping, and slow and steady. This helps define the investment focus they might require.

For example, the report finds Fraser Coast (Hervey Bay), Sunshine Coast-Noosa and Gold Coast are gaining cities. Their progress is fuelled by high population growth rates (around 2.7% annually from 2001 to 2013). But stimulating local businesses will deliver big job growth opportunities.

Rapid population growth is driving the Gold Coast economy, making it a ‘gaining’ city. Pawel Papis from www.shutterstock.com

Similarly, the expanding cities of Cairns, Central Coast and Toowoomba are forecast to have annual output growth of 3.2% to 3.9% until 2031, building on strong foundations of business entries. But they need to create more high-income jobs.

Geelong and Ballarat have low annual population growth rates of around 1.2% to 1.5%. They are classified as slow and steady cities. But their relatively high creative industries scores, coupled with robust rates of business entries, means they have great foundations for growth. They need to stimulate local businesses to deliver city growth.

Get ready to deal

Regional cities remain great places to live. They often score more highly than larger cities on measures of wellbeing and social connection.

But if there’s no shared vision, or local leaders can’t get along well enough to back a shared set of priorities, or debate is dominated by opinion in spite of evidence, local politics may win the day. Negotiations to secure substantial city investment will then likely fail.

The federal government’s Smart Cities Plan has identified City Deals as the vehicle for investment in regional cities.

This collaborative, cross-portfolio, cross-jurisdictional investment mechanism needs all players working together (federal, state and local government), along with community, university and private sector partners. This leaves no place for dominant single interests at the table.

Clearly, the most organised regional cities ready to deal are those capable of getting collaborative regional leadership and strategic planning.

For example, the G21 region in Victoria (including Greater Geelong, Queenscliffe, Surf Coast, Colac Otway and Golden Plains) has well-established credentials in this area. This has enabled the region to move quickly on City Deal negotiations.

Moving past talk to be investment-ready

There’s $378 billion on the table, but Australia’s capacity to harness it will depend on achieving two key goals.

  • First, shifting the entrenched view that the smart money invests only in our big metro cities. This is wrong. Regional cities are just as well positioned to create investment returns as the big five metro centres.
  • Second, regions need to get “investment-ready” for success. This means they need to be able to collaborate well enough to develop an informed set of shared priorities for investment, supported by evidence and linked to a clear growth strategy that builds on existing economic strengths and capabilities. They need to demonstrate their capacity to deliver.

While there has been much conjecture on the relevance and appropriateness of City Deals in Australia, it is mainly focused on big cities. But both big and small cities drive our national growth.

You can explore the data and compare the 31 regional cities using the RAI’s interactive data visualisation tool.

Author: Leonie Pearson, Adjunct Associate, Regional Australia Institute

The Property Imperative Weekly – 24 June 2017

More pain for property investors this week, with lenders continuing to lift mortgage rates and trim maximum LVR’s. And more pain for banks as their credit ratings are trimmed, the federal bank tax becomes law; and South Australia imposes an additional levy on the big five. Welcome to the Property Imperative Weekly to 24th June 2017.

The regular pattern of mortgage interest rates hikes continued, with NAB lifting interest rates for all interest only loans by 35 basis points or 0.35%, whilst cutting principal and interest owner occupied loans by 8 basis points.  Westpac lifted interest only loans by 34 basis points reduced principal and interest loans by 8 basis points. The impact of these changes according to Macquarie will be net positive in terms of bank returns. AMP Bank also lifted investor rates by 35 basis points and reduced the maximum LVR on investor loans to 50%.

These changes are making life difficult for some property investors currently with interest only loans. Do they switch to a principal and interest alternative, thus lifting their monthly repayments, or wear the lift in rates on their current loans, thus lifting their repayments? It’s a prisoner’s dilemma. Either way, it is less likely the current rental on the property will cover the costs of the loan repayments and we know from our surveys about half of all investment properties are underwater when it comes to covering the repayment flows.

More data this week to show that some major lenders are dialling back investor loans via brokers to try and manage their portfolios to within the current APRA guidelines. This trend, which we have highlighted before, was confirmed in the AFG Competition Index.

Mortgage stress was in the news again, with surprising results from Roy Morgan’s survey which showed that from their 10,000 mortgaged household sample, in the three months to April 2017, 16.8% or 666,000 mortgage holders can be considered to be ‘at risk’ or facing some degree of stress over their repayments. This compares favourably with 18.4% or 744,000 mortgage holders 12 months ago. It is worth noting their definition of stress though – “Mortgage stress is based on the ability of home borrowers to meet the repayment guidelines currently provided by the major banks. The level of mortgage holders being currently considered ‘at risk’ is based on their ability to meet repayments on the original amount borrowed. This is currently 16.8%, which is well below the average over the last decade”.

The DFA approach to mortgage stress, which looks at total household cash flow, not the theoretical repayment profile, indicates that mortgage stress is continuing to rise as incomes are crushed in real terms, costs of living rise, underemployment stalks many, on top of a series of mortgage rate rises. Data from Canstar showed that basic variable rates jumped by almost 30 basis points as increasing number of borrowers go for fixed rate loans so trying to control these escalating mortgage costs, but of course, many fixed rates already have higher costs wired in.

We looked at the correlation between mortgage stress and bank loan losses, which we expect to rise in coming months. Indeed, the latest data from Standard and Poor’s showed that home loan delinquencies underlying Australian prime residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) increased from 1.16% in March to 1.21% in April. They link the rise to higher mortgage rates.

But whether you take the 666,000 households from Roy Morgan, or 794,000 from DFA, both are big numbers! There are many households in mortgage pain, and all the indicators are things will get worse in the months ahead.

We expect APRA will demand the banks hold more capital, US rates were lifted by the Fed, and Moody’s downgraded the long-term credit rating of 12 banks including Australia’s big four, after pointing to surging home prices, rising household debt and sluggish wage growth. They said “elevated risks within the household sector heighten the sensitivity of Australian banks’ credit profiles to an adverse shock, notwithstanding improvements in their capital and liquidity in recent years”.

There were state budgets in NSW and SA. In NSW Stamp duty makes up a huge proportion of the State’s income, at $10 billion, with revenues jumping 10% over the past year and are expected to grow 6% each year for the next three years. From July 1 stamp duty for FHBs will be abolished for new homes up to $650,000 with discounts on properties of up to $800,000. Additionally, grants of $10,000 will be available for new homes of up to $600,000 and for FHBs who build their home. Stamp duty will no longer be charged on lenders mortgage insurance.

South Australia surprised by adding a local bank tax to the big five. They plan to charge a levy on the major banks bonds and deposits over $250,000 but will exclude mortgages and ordinary household deposits. The tax, to be introduced 1 July, is expected to raise $370 million over four years. The banks responded, including threats to pull jobs from SA, but then the banks are easy targets, and we would not be surprised if other states followed suite.

Meantime the federal bank tax was passed after a brief senate review. Now the Treasurer has announced plans to change the way eligibility for a credit card is assessed, shifting it from the ability to pay the minimum repayment to being able “to repay the credit limit within a reasonable period”.

Australians’ wealth is overwhelmingly in our housing. Our housing stock worth valued at $6.6 trillion. That’s nearly double the combined value of ASX capitalisation and superannuation funds.

Housing is strongly linked to financial stability as highlighted in excellent speech by Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer. He said there was a strong link between financial crises and difficulties in the real estate sector. In addition to its role in financial stability, or instability, housing is also a sector that draws on and faces heavy government intervention, even in economies that generally rely on market mechanisms.

Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) published a report this week on housing policies across the nation. They argue, rightly, that Australia needs a federal minister for housing, a dedicated housing portfolio, and an agency responsible for conceptualising and co-ordinating policy. The current fragmented, ad-hoc approach to housing policy seems poorly matched to the scale of the housing sector and its importance to Australia.  There is no clear systematic policy framework for housing across the nation, just piecemeal bits of policy, which are not fit for purpose.

Finally, the ABS released their residential property price data to March 2017. They said overall, prices rose on average 2.2% in the quarter. The price rises in Sydney (3.0 per cent) and Melbourne (3.1 per cent) were partially offset by falls in Perth (1.0 per cent) and Darwin (0.9 per cent).

Through the year growth in residential property prices reached 10.2 per cent in the March quarter. Sydney recorded the largest through the year growth of all capital cities at 14.4 per cent, followed closely by Melbourne at 13.4 per cent.

This ongoing rise may go counter to some recent data, although we note the CoreLogic data this week also shows rises in most centres, after recent softer data. The next ABS series, due out in 3 months will be the one to watch.  Auction clearances last weekend were quite strong, if on lower volumes, so as yet, signs of a real slow-down remain muted.

And that’s it for this week. Check back next week for the next installment.

Not in their interest: The home loan borrowers that have been left out to dry

From The SMH.

There is a hidden and worrying risk lurking for a particular set of mortgage borrowers, whose level of financial stress is about to get a whole lot worse.

It’s those home owners with interest-only loans that are now increasingly under the pump – with National Australia Bank the latest of the big four to announce big hikes in rates on these types of loans.

While banks, the media and the government regularly characterise those that have interest-only loans as wealthy property investors, the fact is that there are many owner-occupiers that have used this method to finance the family home.

Ironically, regulators have pushed the banks to reduce interest-only lending to improve the overall risk of consumers’ debt to the financial system. But for those investors with interest-only loans, the chances of being unable to service them creates a new and unintended risk.

These hikes have not attracted the ire of the government, which has put the banks on notice that any move to increase mortgage rates will be intensely scrutinised. Again, because it is not seen as hitting the political heartland of the average voter with a mortgage to finance their own home.

But these borrowers are particularly vulnerable because many of them took out their interest-only loans because they didn’t have enough cash flow to repay interest and principal.

The banks have been under regulatory pressure to herd these interest-only borrowers into interest and principal loans – offering little or no fees to change over to principals, and interest rates that are now around 0.6 per cent lower.

The catch though is that monthly repayments will be higher in most cases because the borrower also needs to repay principal.

Those that can afford to switch will do so, but there will be many that will need to remain on interest-only and have to wear the rate increase.

For owner-occupiers who have an interest and principal loan, interest rates have not fallen by much in this latest round of adjustments.

National Australia Bank and Westpac customers will see their rate fall by 0.08 per cent while ANZ customers will benefit to the tune of 0.05 per cent.

It is better than nothing, but won’t have a really meaningful impact to the weekly household budget.

For banks, the positive effect of the far bigger increases on interest-only loans will significantly outweigh the negative impact of the small fall in rates on interest and principal loans.

Indeed Westpac – which has a higher proportion of interest-only loans than the others – could boost its earnings by 3.5 per cent, according to research from Macquarie. This is calculated on the basis of all other things being equal.

But Macquarie takes the view that this earnings benefit will be eroded to some degree by some customers switching to interest and principal loans – the caveat being if they can afford it.

Martin North from industry consultant Digital Finance Analytics believes that some investor/borrowers that have interest-only loans would have less incentive to switch because the tax effectiveness of this type of borrowing could be negatively affected.

Young families, investors most at risk

The bottom line is that regardless of the kind of borrower, the overall effect of this latest round of interest rate resets will be to improve bank earnings, because in aggregate borrowers will pay more.

North said the two segments most at risk for mortgage stress are younger families that are more typically first home owners that pushed their finances to get into the property market over the past couple of years and at the other end of the spectrum a more affluent group that took advantage of the rising property market and low interest rates to buy one or more investment properties.

Both North and analysts at Macquarie warn that the flow-on effects from increased rate rises even on just interest -only loans, and the potential for some to switch to interest and principal, could be damaging for the wider economy.

“The increase to IO (interest-only) loans combined with the increased likelihood of customers switching to P&I (principal and interest), in our view, will ultimately lead to further reductions in disposable incomes and put even greater pressure on highly indebted households. We estimate that a 50 basis point increase in interest rates has a 4 to 10 per cent impact on disposable income of highly indebted households.

“While it would rationally make sense for many households (particularly for owner-occupiers) to switch to P&I, …. many of these households would not have capacity to do this,’ Macquarie said in a note to clients this week.

‘Deadly combination’

In analysing the reasons for an increased level of stressed households, North noted that “the main drivers are rising mortgage rates and living costs whilst real incomes continue to fall and underemployment is on the rise. This is a deadly combination and is touching households across the country, not just in the mortgage belts.’

Against this, the incentive for banks to massage rates higher is greater than ever, given they have been hit by the Federal Government’s bank levy and this week by an additional tax from the South Australian government that many fear could be adopted by other states down the track.

On the other side of the household ledger, the lack of any real growth in wages is only exacerbating the squeeze.

A report from Cit this week that analyses the industry segments in which jobs are growing provides insight into the problem.

“Not only does Australia have an underemployment problem that has been highlighted by the monthly labour force series, but the quarterly data shows that the economy is creating mostly jobs that are below average in terms of earnings,” it said.