Friday, October 11, 2024

Month: January 2023

Housing Affordability: Would a Foreign Buyer Ban Make a Difference?

While home values have steadily retreated from their pandemic peak in recent months, they remain at near-record highs, posing an ongoing challenge for many Australians who want to own their own home.

In the September quarter of last year the national average home price sat at $889,800, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows – 33% higher than in September 2019 ($668,800).

Joey Moloney, a senior associate at the Grattan Institute, says that the affordability of housing in Australia has been deteriorating for years though.

Read the full article at Money Magazine

Australian Property Forecast: What’s In Store For 2023?

The property market took a hit in 2022 as mortgage rates started to increase much faster than initially expected, rising eight times to end the year at 3.1%. To put this into context, the cash rate was sitting at just 0.1% at the beginning of 2022.

“I think what we saw in 2022 was a bit of a roller coaster really in terms of property prices in the property market because we started the year with record prices and then moved into a downturn quite rapidly,” chief of research and economics at Domain, Nicola Powell, told ForbesAdvisor.

Earlier in 2021 the RBA governor, Phillip Lowe, had said that it would not be raising rates until 2024—a comment Lowe has since stepped back from and apologised to borrowers who took out heft loans on the basis of his erroneous advice.

“The RBA kept on insisting that they wouldn’t lift rates until 2024. Now we were skeptical that they could keep to that promise,” SQM Research owner and managing director, Louis Christopher, added.

In 2023 property experts are cautiously optimistic that as interest rates plateau that stability will return to the market. Here’s what we may expect to see…

Read the original article at forbes.com

How housing made rich Australians 50 per cent richer, leaving renters and the young behind

How housing made rich Australians 50 per cent richer, leaving renters and the young behind — and how to fix it

Compared to the rest of the world, income inequality is not particularly high in Australia, nor is it getting much worse — until you include housing.

Rising housing costs have dramatically widened the gap between what Australians on high and low incomes can afford. Rising home prices paired with plummeting rates of home-ownership are driving up wealth inequalities.

If we want to address inequality, we will have to fix housing.

Key points:

  • Housing is draining the incomes of the poor
  • Housing is driving wealth inequality
  • Housing is driving up capital income
  • Housing is creating a “Jane Austen world”
  • The Federal Government needs to fix taxation
  • Australia needs to build more houses

Read the original article at The Conversation

What’s Going to Happen With the Cost of Living Crisis in 2023?

2022 was a year of turbulence. With the war in Ukraine sparking a global energy crisis, our Reserve Bank raising interest rates to their highest levels in decades, and lettuce somehow costing more than some street drugs, we were all watching our wallets and wondering where it was going to end up.

Now that we’re into the bright and shiny year of 2023, those factors are still very much with us. But just how far this cost of living crisis and economic unrest will go over the next 12 months is still a little hazy.

Inflation is still the driving factor in the cost of living crisis, with the price of virtually everything soaring. As the government and the RBA grapple to get it under control, there are policy interventions that may help people weather the storm. But how long it keeps raining for will again depend on global, environmental, and individual factors, which are all very hard to map economically.

So, here’s what the financial forecast looks like between now and next year, and precisely how much financial anxiety you should be feeling.