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Australia Faces Its Demons


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I work with someone who can't shift their 3 bed townhouse on the wrong side of the city and they actually said they wouldn't give it away when I suggested lowering the price ?‍♂️

We've just purchased a family members house for a hefty discount an hour out of the city as we decided renting would be too disruptive with a the selling off that's probably going to start happening.

I'm staggered by the amount of people here who have rental portfolios.

I'm just looking for stability for the family. Bonus is we'll be mortgage free too.

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3 hours ago, BoredByTorque said:

I'm staggered by the amount of people here who have rental portfolios.

We are now five years back in the UK after ten down under. I have tried to impress upon people, both on this forum and elsewhere, the sheer scale of the insanity down there. I know it can be hard to believe for someone who is familiar with the London property market, but the major cities in Australia knock London into a cocked hat when it comes to pricing and the relentless obsession with property. We left Sydney when we realised we wouldn't be able to afford anything nice, and thought the prices were crazy. They've since nearly doubled, so by my reckoning they could halve now and still be expensive. Who knows where the bottom is? My guess is that the RBA will throw what they can at it (although they have been sounding the alarm for a decade), and any drop in price there will have to be considered in AUD terms as well. By that metric, 60-70% down in GBP could be on the cards and then it might be tempting to move back (GBP problems not withstanding). This meltdown in Aus is well overdue and is going to be epic. It will be very interesting to see how it pans out.

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4 hours ago, mattyboy1973 said:

I have tried to impress upon people, both on this forum and elsewhere, the sheer scale of the insanity down there. I know it can be hard to believe for someone who is familiar with the London property market, but the major cities in Australia knock London into a cocked hat when it comes to pricing and the relentless obsession with property.

Spot on.

It also made Sydney/Melbourne dinner parties and poolside BBQs utterly unbearable for most of the last 10 years. 

But I have to stress, it is very much a Sydney/Melbourne phenomenon. There are vast swathes of Australia, and even large cities, such as Brisbane and Perth, where there has been no such insane property price appreciation. 

I hope that the Canberra politicians and the RBA and financial regulators are smart enough to see this situation as what it is, a development that occurred through short sighted, lazy policy making, and therefore let this bubble burst, as painful as that will be for the denizens of Australia's two largest cities.

That is my hope, but it is disappointing to see just how many articles there are in the Sydney and Melbourne based financial press talking of the UK/Canadian approach to a potential housing bust ( the Carney approach) as something to be followed, and even admired. 

 

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6 hours ago, mattyboy1973 said:

I know it can be hard to believe for someone who is familiar with the London property market, but the major cities in Australia knock London into a cocked hat when it comes to pricing and the relentless obsession with property. 

I keep telling everyone how expensive *everything* is here and coming from London after 10 years that shocked me. 

They were saying that unemployment is low, IR are low, the house prices dropping is unheard of with those factors.

My dear old dad said it's because everyone here is hocked up to their eyeballs. He's a builder and said at Christmas 'the big ones coming very soon'

He encouraged us to buy the house we did as he thinks it will be carnage too and advice was hunker down somewhere cheap, that you aren't going to get chucked out of.

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18 hours ago, No One said:

Why doesnt the woman living in the trailer declare bankruptcy? 

She bought it 20 years ago! Presumably for far less than it is worth now. Hard to see that general inflation in wage rates would not mean that her earnings would have increased more than the mortgage payments - so she should have been able to pay off the loan. So how come she is struggling with a mortgage - given that interest rates now are far lower than they have been in the past? Are Aussie mortgages more like UK mortgages (25 years at variable rate) or US mortgages (30 years at fixed rate but with no prepayment penalty if rates move lower)?   

Maybe she is deserving of sympathy and there is a reason why my suppositions are wrong. Or maybe she has taken out equity loans. Reports that do not make clear what is happening fail in the ir fundamental purpose -  to convey information to an audience and help it understand the situation.

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Oz:-

Grabbing the equity is normal.

Mortgages are full recourse.

State assistance (we only know about Victoria) means applying for an interest-free loan, which you can only get if you can prove it can be repaid!

We have friends who are stuffed and about to get completely screwed. It hurts to watch the slow motion inevitability, but they were warned.

Are they bonkers? Or is it because I'm a Jew married to a Scots Gentile and wanting value for money is ingrained in us? Maybe if everyone was like us the system wouldn't work at all? 

Edit: the woman in the caravan was trying to get an early release of her superannuation. I heard that that doesn't get approved often either. Oz is very controlling. A strict but sociopathic parent. - The dirt cheap public transport, and the people, are probably the only things I like about the country!

 

 

 

 

Edited by Cosmic Lunatic Asylum
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36 minutes ago, Society of fools said:

The good news keeps on coming from Australia.

 

Why can't we get this kind of cheery stuff from the UK ? Still sitting on the knife-edge.....teetering....

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-02/australian-housing-prices-fall-4.8pc-weakest-since-gfc/10678444?section=business

 

Its also in the Guardian this morning. 

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On 14/12/2018 at 03:47, MissOnAccomplished said:

She bought it 20 years ago! Presumably for far less than it is worth now. Hard to see that general inflation in wage rates would not mean that her earnings would have increased more than the mortgage payments - so she should have been able to pay off the loan. So how come she is struggling with a mortgage - given that interest rates now are far lower than they have been in the past? Are Aussie mortgages more like UK mortgages (25 years at variable rate) or US mortgages (30 years at fixed rate but with no prepayment penalty if rates move lower)?   

Maybe she is deserving of sympathy and there is a reason why my suppositions are wrong. Or maybe she has taken out equity loans. Reports that do not make clear what is happening fail in the ir fundamental purpose -  to convey information to an audience and help it understand the situation.

Houses in Elizabeth 20 years ago were extremely cheap, even by Adelaide standards. Still are. Ex-council, I’d guess $60,000 ish. 

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The best part of the clarity of the Australian house price fall statistics is that they are just about impossible to spin as a good news story, especially when it is the two major cities- with half of the national population-where the price falls are occurring. 

Some news websites have pointed out that Hobart, population about 250,000, is still booming in terms of annual house price rises, but that would just elicit a justified national shrug. 

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Wolf Street: "As Speculators Flee, Sales of New Houses in Australia Plunge to Lowest since at least 2001"

What I find most shocking is that as of October 2018 "investors" still accounted for over 40% of the market for "purchase-mortgage commitments " (i.e. "new" mortgages, not re-mortgages) surely by this time the writing was on the wall for house prices and only a complete idiot would still look to "invest" in a market that's so obviously tanking..

Looks like the good old FTBs have been sucked in to partially fill the void in sales volumes; although again I can't see why anyone in this position with a shred of sense would buy now.

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The House price news coming out of Australia is almost uniformly good, really delightful stuff. 

All of this teeth-gnashing angst we are constantly having about the Halifax and Nationwide monthly reports, eventually, the reality simply blows through those numbers, as it has done down-under.

And then you get figures like the ones just out- Sydney house prices down 1.3% in a month

And then you can smile ever more broadly every month. To be sure, there is some talk in Australian power circles about the RBA needing to cut interest rates to arrest the house price slide, but the pushback from the public, at least as judged by comments sections in Newspapers when such an idea is circulated, is about 5 to 1 against the idea. 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-01/corelogic-property-price-falls-january/10769704?section=business

 

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Great - stuff was just wondering when we'd see some more figures as Oz had gone quiet recently.

I'm very interested to see where it ends; tbh the 10% speculated would be very disappointing; I think given the reaft of causal factors, the stratospheric highs and the establishment's apparent unwillingness to start propping up the market like crazy it has to go a lot more than that; 30% plus maybe..?

18 minutes ago, Captain Kirk said:

Scumbags feeding on the weakest / most naive as usual - saddens me that anyone is actually stupid enough to buy into a market that's falling so rapidly. -1%/month on a $528k / £290k mean-priced house must be getting close to equalling the income of these idiot buyers..

 

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More good news from Oz.

Bloomberg: An Upheaval Is Coming for Australian Banks

Quote

One of the biggest effects of Hayne’s recommendations could be a further squeeze on credit. In his interim report, Hayne took the banks to task for lax lending standards -- from failing to verify borrowers’ income and expenses -- to failing to comply with responsible lending laws.

USB Group AG analysts have estimated that a move to full expense verification by banks is likely to reduce maximum borrowing capacity by about 30 percent.

Banks have already tightened loan requirements, which has been cited as one of the main reasons behind the rapid decline in home prices. Even tougher standards could deal a further blow to the soggy housing market.

 

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On 09/12/2018 at 00:49, Kurt Barlow said:

Wifeys aunt is trying to sell in Adelaide but failed to sell. I was told this was because buyers are refusing to pay the market price?

47C in Adelaide last month.

And having lived there when it hit 45C I can safely say it is hellish.

Aussies seem to be in denial about a lot of things. 1. It will get hotter and hotter every decade. 2. Sucking in great numbers of immigrants only boosts the economy temporarily. You can’t keep doing it forever.

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3 hours ago, PeanutButter said:

47C in Adelaide last month.

And having lived there when it hit 45C I can safely say it is hellish.

Aussies seem to be in denial about a lot of things. 1. It will get hotter and hotter every decade. 2. Sucking in great numbers of immigrants only boosts the economy temporarily. You can’t keep doing it forever.

The getting hotter bit is bad.

But Oz is getting drier too.

 

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