Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) Blog
"Intelligent Insight"
From The Conversation. When politicians talk about tax and fairness, it’s easy for them to point out undeserved loopholes benefiting the wealthy, or multinational companies. But the elephant in the room is the difference between those who own and those who rent (or have recently bought and have huge mortgages) the house they live in. … Continue reading “The way Australia taxes housing is manifestly unfair”
Treasurer Scott Morrison announced that the budget to be released on 3 May would focus on curbing spending to lower the government’s fiscal deficit. However, given previous difficulties in reducing welfare benefits, actual spending cuts may be modest. Moreover, Mr. Morrison’s announcement excluded measures to raise revenues. Without such measures, limited spending cuts are unlikely … Continue reading “Australia’s Focus on Spending Cuts Makes Balancing Budget Difficult – Moody’s”
The latest data from our Household Finance Confidence Index showed little change in the month of March 2016, moving from 88.11 to 88.14 when averaged across all households. As the findings from last month therefore remain current, this will be a brief update this time around. Confidence is still below the neutral setting of 100, … Continue reading “Household Finance Confidence Still Low In March”
Today we continue to feature research published in the latest edition of The Property Imperative, The full report is available on request. We look across the property investment sector, which remains strong despite lower growth in investment lending. We continue to see that tax benefits and the prospects of better gains than deposit accounts or … Continue reading “Property Investors Are Still In The Game”
The updated edition of “The Property Imperative”, our flagship report on the residential housing sector, which includes survey data to March 2016 is now available free on request. From the introduction: The Property Imperative is published twice each year, drawing data from our ongoing consumer surveys, research and blog. This edition dates from March 2016 … Continue reading “New Edition of “The Property Imperative” Just Released”
Continuing our series on the results from our latest household surveys, today we look at first time buyers. Data from our surveys, combined with recently released ABS data, highlights that first time buyers are more active now compared with last year. Whilst many first time buyers are seeking to buy a place to call home, … Continue reading “Latest Survey Shows First Time Buyer Aspirations Remain High”
In the latest edition of the DFA Household Finance Confidence Index, to end January 2016, we see a marked fall in overall confidence, down from 91.46 to 89.24. This reverses the improvement we saw in the last quarter of 2015. Households with investment property and stock market investments registered the strongest declines. Those in WA … Continue reading “Household Finance Confidence Takes A Dive”
From The Conversation. To see Australia’s shortage of affordable housing as a failure of government is to misunderstand the politics that underpin housing. The vast proportion of government money spent on housing directly benefits the well-off at the expense of private renters and public housing tenants. Government policy has not, on the whole, failed. It … Continue reading “How policy success, not failure, has driven Australia’s housing crisis”
The latest iteration of the BIS paper on proposed capital adequacy changes includes a fundamental change to the way the risk charge would be calculated for investment property purchases funded by a mortgage. Fundamentally, if repayments are “materially dependent on cash flows generated by the property”, then depending on the loan to value ratio, the … Continue reading “How Material Is “Material” For Property Investors?”
From The Conversation. Australia’s quest to develop a stronger innovation ecosystem has seen a growing focus on the income tax system, and whether it should be used as a lever to help achieve this goal. Some have argued the government should not use tax incentives to spur the shifts needed to make Australia an innovation … Continue reading “The tax system can play a role in Australian innovation”