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The ABS released their latest data on Residential Property Prices today. The total value of residential dwellings in Australia was $5,196,355.9 m at the end of June quarter 2014, rising $112,598.5 m over the quarter. The mean price of residential dwellings rose $9,900 and the number of residential dwellings rose by 37,600 in the June … Continue reading “House Price Momentum Slowing As Value Reaches $5.2 Trillion”
The latest ABS Retail Trade figures show that Australian retail turnover rose 0.6 per cent in June 2014, seasonally adjusted, following a fall of 0.3 per cent in May 2014. Turnover rose in household good retailing (1.7 per cent), food retailing (0.5 per cent), other retailing (0.9 per cent) and clothing, footwear and personal accessory … Continue reading “Retail Turnover Up In June – ABS”
The ABS published their data today on Building Approvals to June 2014. The number of dwellings approved fell 1.1 per cent in June 2014, in trend terms, and has fallen for six months. The seasonally adjusted estimate for total dwellings approved fell 5.0% in June following a rise of 10.3% in the previous month. The … Continue reading “Building Approvals Fall In June – ABS”
The wind appears to be changing. First the new head of APRA warned at a CEDA event they were watching the mortgage lending of the banks closely, “The Australian banking system clearly has a concentration of risk in housing. If anything was to go wrong in the housing market it would have very severe impact … Continue reading “If The Worm Turns, What Happens To Household Mortgage Stress?”
Having summarised the main observations from the 460 page Financial System Inquiry (FSI) interim report yesterday, today we start to delve more deeply into some of most important issues raised. In a number of areas, we believe the work to date could be sharpened. Lender’s Mortgage Insurance. The report rightly highlights that for banks with … Continue reading “Reflections On The FSI Interim Report – Part 1”
As reported in Fairfax outlets today, Coles has announced plans to offer personal loans by teaming up with GE Capital and will split the cost 50/50. The new service planned is planned for launch mid-2015. It will need regulatory approval, but Coles will not need a banking licence. 400,000 Coles MasterCard customer accounts form part … Continue reading “Coles Raises Its Banking Game”
The draft report was released today. In a layered document, it sets out a series of 28 observations, and possible options for ongoing consideration. The main observations are set out below: • The banking sector is competitive, albeit concentrated. The application of capital requirements is not competitively neutral. Banks that use internal ratings-based (IRB) risk … Continue reading “Financial System Inquiry – Interim Report”
The ABC TV News and The Business featured a piece in Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI). The segment included data from the DFA household survey, data which can be found in our post Is Lenders Mortgage Insurance a Good Thing? We concluded: “Overall, whilst LMI may allow some to access the property markets sooner, and protects … Continue reading “Focus On Lenders Mortgage Insurance”
The UK Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have today published a review of the changes introduced last year which were put in place to reduce the barriers to entry for new financial institutions. The purpose of the measures was to enable increased competition in the banking industry, to the benefit of customers. … Continue reading “Increasing Competition In Banking – Lessons From The UK”
The latest ABS Retail Trade figures show that Australian retail turnover fell 0.5 per cent in May 2014, seasonally adjusted, following a fall of 0.1 per cent in April 2014. The largest contributor to the fall was clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing (-2.3 per cent), followed by department stores (-2.6 per cent), household goods … Continue reading “Retail Turnover Fell 0.5 per cent in May 2014 – ABS”