House prices

thats very close Don.

OK, prediction noted.

brutus wrote:

indo-dreaming wrote:

freeride76 wrote:

Anyone here brave enough to predict a crash, or even a modest correction?

Cant see it happening, can only see stagnation and very modest corrections in next few years and then in time more rises, im predicting just more of what we have seen for the last 20 years.

Off course i have zero expertise in this area, just my 2 cents worth.

there has to be a correction as we are now in new economic territory....real estate prices booming , art sales booming , even surfboard/surfwear sales booming ...but wages are stagnant ! of

the low interest rates are part of the problem as money is so cheap there is not much interest to pay back and with negative gearing it's a boom period for those with cash and or great credit lines......feels like there are a lot of rich people who have got a lot richer and they are out there spending outrageous sums of money like retail therapy....and comfort shopping all rolled into one.....but we are now facing an unprecedented conditions in the Global economy....inflation is now ramping up at levels never seen before. Jerome Powell chairman of the USA fed , recently said the inflation is just short term...he changed his mind last week as the core inflation in the USA just hit 4.3% , fastest growth in 30 years and reports are it's going to double in the next 12 mths..........
The only remedy for slowing inflation is increasing interest rates.....so the question is what's driving inflation so hard......or why are the cost of goods going thru the roof ......so the correction is coming , but no-one knows how bad.......

Maybe, it's just people even experts have been saying the same for 25 years, so I've got to the point now where im thinking maybe their wrong and maybe it will keep going on the same little cycle.

I think the wage growth thing though is misleading, i don't how they calculate it, but i dont know anyone who's wages are truely stagnant, even my wife in a low paid aged care job has seen her hourly rate increase quite a bit in the last ten years, in 2019 Australia had the highest min wage in the world and we are still number two in the world.

The inflation in the USA is a concern though if it also happens here, because yeah a decent to big increase in interest rates would be the killer.

History always repeats,I remember seeing a photo of an old house near the foot of Sydney Harbour bridge that was sold for about 50 pounds back in the early 1900’s,I spoke to an old bloke who runs a caravan park on the Bellarine who bought his plot for about 100 pound in the late 1940’s,my old man bought a block for $7000 in the mid 1970’s,my first block cost me $18000 dollars in the late 1980’s, last one was for $800000 400m from the beach,views of my local,(break,not pub)worth over twice that now,any one see a pattern here?long term statistics say real estate doubles in value every 7-10 years,just not a linear rise,House prices aren’t going to come down significantly any time soon,if its a Government policy fuck up that been causing house price rises,its been going for a long time.

Blowin wrote:

It’s a Ponzi mate.

No productive reason to quote this sentence, just, you know, Vic Local.

"Nearly 500,000 Australian expats and travellers have returned since the start of the pandemic"
March 21
https://www.smh.com.au/national/lack-of-empathy-and-sympathy-formerly-st...

Like VL's Christmas prediction of a full scale super spread of covid from the Avalon cluster that never got above 35, just before his dramatic exit of self induced exile.......

unsustainable immigration is factor of several re housing.
its why the RE industry were screaming about border closures a year ago before shit went crazy and the suits were claiming 20% falls.
Its why the white shoes are still screaming about border closures now as the first home buyers played catch up in a market while the investors watched from the sidelines.
its why its going to keep going boom when pre-covid immigration kicks back in to gear

this is not racist

Blowin wrote:

The level of FOMO and investor sentiment driving the current craziness could not exist without the preceding decade plus of mass immigration driven demand.

100%

Liney that was a pretty good post, I'm aware of the 'double every 7 years' saying - and was taught you can take it all the way back to the Domesday book, so that's nearly 1000 years of evidence.

I'd be curious to go back to 50 pounds in the early 1900s - say 1905 - and work out what that value was in gold (for the pound was, literally, gold in the form of a gold sovereign @ 92.5% gold/ 7.5% copper, or also silver, in the form of crowns/shillings/florins adding up to a 'pound as a certain weight of 92.5% silver... thus the ratio was 'fixed'...) - takes breath - and then compare the gold value to the average wage of, say, a teacher; both then and now.

Of course, the pound in Australia was gold/silver tied until 1945 (the UK lost it earlier as they were broke) in circulating coins and redeemable banknotes; and then the USD was until Nixon closed the gold window and took them off the gold standard in 1971 following massive deficits accumulated in the Vietnam war. (Fun fact: the 'oil crisis' of the early 1970s was just the Arab oil producers wanting the same weight in gold for their oil as previously). What followed, for most of our lifetimes, has been massive inflation of fiat currencies and inflation and 'control' of commodity prices.

OK, I've got 50 pounds as 50 gold sovereigns - each contains 0.2354 of a troy ounce of gold (not including silver/copper).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_%28British_coin%29

(Australian sovereigns were very similar, only differed in the %s of the other metals in them in some years iirc)

At a current Perth Mint ask price of $2353.12, that's 11.77 oz of gold (lol), that's $27,696 in 'today's' AUD... for the house near the foot of Sydney harbour bridge.

Now I didn't find a 1905 teacher's wage, but I got a 1910 managers' wage in Vic of 264 pounds 8 shillings 1d... let's just say 264 pounds...

Edit: 264 pounds is 62.1456 oz of gold earnings per year, or $146,236 in 'todays' dollars - not bad and comparable I'd say...

https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/whatitcost/earnings

That's a house price to wage ratio of 50/264 or 0.18.... haha that's ridiculous...

Let's say we are a factory worker on 157 pounds a year, yes, we can afford the house near the Harbour bridge on a house price to wage ratio of 0.318...

Edit: In gold that's 36.9578 oz per year, or $86,966 salary per year - which seems a wage that many tradesman could get, maybe factory workers a bit less so today...

Surely I've done something wrong in the calculations... you could afford to have 10 kids and go drinking every night and still buy harbour front property in 1910...

Edit: the gold/wages seem similar, it's just the RE prices that have gone totally nuts

VJ,that was some research,the price of the harbour house was given to me anecdotally,seems like it incorrect by you calculations,but I stand by my opinion that prices are never going backwards over the long term.Your Surfcoast aren’t you,price a place went for in Pride st last month left me flabbergasted

Yeah the Pride St sale just made me go whaaaaa

We lived through mining boom phase1 in WA - at the peak of the boom I noted things like workers on the flights north talking about having 10 investment properties, crew just out of school on triple figures & instant jetskis and SS utes, people gifting 17K televisions and Lambos driving around the suburban streets of Perth - I noticed there was a point where the $/m2 value of our locale just doubled in a month! Also, Dad always taught me about location, buying the oldest place on the best street etc - but there was a point in that boom when that theory went out the window; new and ready to go was valued at 2x the price per m2 of old and needs work, ie, people had abandoned rational pricing. That also was the peak, as the GFC hit and then we were hearing rumours of people trying to weasel out of contracts, lawsuits etc...

What I see on SC presently is like living through the peak of mining boom phase1 in WA... but the underlying fundamental drivers ("get me the fuck out of this city! Hey, nice waves...") seem set to continue. I don't know where this ends up, but I may have the interior repainted by then and the kitchen and tiles done :)

freeride76 wrote:

it does mean something

it means equity and banks will lend bottomless money on property equity.

which means in this ultra-low interest environment you could (and people are) enrich yourself massively.

You still have to service the loan repayments and banks chucking money at you because you have an asset is not quite the same post GFC, they want to see cash flow.

renters service the loan for you.

any shortfall is a tax deduction (negative gearing)

Banks won't lend endlessly on property equity: banks also consider the borrower's ability to repay the loan as equally, if not more, important.

An investment property being negatively geared means its rental income is less than the combined sum of the interest component of the loan repayments plus other expenses such as insurance, property management fees, repairs and maintenance, rates, etc. (Only the interest component is an expense and hence tax deductible.)

So if a rental property is negatively geared, then the rental income certainly does not cover the overall loan repayments plus expenses (does not even cover interest component plus expenses), so there is an income/cashflow deficit, even after factoring in the reduction in personal income tax paid due to the negative gearing.

So as investors load up on negatively geared investment properties, this cashflow/income deficit eats into their overall cashflow/income situation, and banks will eventually stop lending to them when a limit is reached, even if investors still have equity left over somewhere.

The issue the vast majority of current borrowers - both investors and owner occupiers - are facing is they are fully stretching themselves to the limit of what their income/cashflow can support based on the current level of home loan interest rates. They seem to be completely discounting the possibility of home loan interest rates going up much in the future. This is partly fuelled by the RBA reassuring people that interest rates won't be going up anytime soon.

Banks somewhat protect themselves from this possibility of higher home loan interest rates in the future, and this blind and idiotic borrower behaviour, by using a "buffer interest rate" when assessing a borrower's ability to pay (they don't use current interest rates, which are historically very low). I see that CBA and others recently upped their buffer rate to 5.25% (https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/cba-toughens-home-loan-...).

So this buffer rate further reduces the amount a bank will lend, regardless of how much spare equity a borrower has.

I believe that even these buffer rates are too low, based on historical home loan interest rates: https://www.infochoice.com.au/rate-watch/history-of-interest-rate-moveme.... Based on this graph, home loan interest rates below 6% are a rarity since the 60s and only occur in very challenging economic times.

I think the property bubble has a real chance of spectacularly bursting if home loan interest rates go much above 6% again. There is a very real possibility of this happening in Australia even if the RBA does not increase the cash rate much due to banks sourcing a significant amount of their funding offshore, so all it takes is interest rates increasing in the markets from which banks source their funding (well, really just US interest rates since global financial activity is largely denominated in USD).

"The issue the vast majority of current borrowers - both investors and owner occupiers - are facing is they are fully stretching themselves to the limit of what their income/cashflow can support based on the current level of home loan interest rates."

Not according to the RBA.

Last time they warned about mortgage holders being over stressed was 2011, that I can see.

Every other note makes mention of the decrease in mortgage costs due to low interest rates.

I think you've also made an error there: it's not the interest rates which are leading to over-stretched borrowers, it's the price of purchase of the property.

RBA also notes cost of funding for banks is at historic lows so they have significant margin available to absorb plenty of mortgage stress if it comes to that, as they have just proven in 2020.

I think they would offer significant mortgage holidays or other contingencies rather than crash the Australian property market, a major source of their wealth.

Don't you?

House prices are so overcooked that a jubilee is inevitable, but a chip in the wrist or forehead might be the trade-off this jubilee, as per Revelation 13-16.

".......blind and idiotic borrower behaviour..."

Such sentiment and comments have been thrown around for the last 30 years. its so easy to say when one has been fortunate to enough to be of a generation that has benefited enormously from a housing boom.

what do you expect the young and vulnerable to do. They are squeezed between booming mortgages or unavailable or booming rents (currently higher or similar than a mortgage repayment).

..meanwhile the home buyer is making a killing.,.
and if it all goes shit - it wont - the gov and banks will bail them out - - just like they did last year.

freeride76 wrote:

renters service the loan for you.)

This shouldn't be taken for granted, particularly in the "hottest markets" (the fact we talk about homes in that way is a huge part of the problem). I've had to laugh a little bit when people have been talking about Byron's rental struggles lately, because where I live in Hobart has had the same or even lower rental vacancy rates for about 3 or 4 years running. It's incredibly common for people to pay 40-70% of their income on rent in sharehouses. People burst into laughter when they learn the official "rental stress" level is 30% of income, because that has been entirely normal for a whole demographic of peopel for years. There's no jobs, house prices have pretty much doubled in five years and are still going up. There is essentially no hope for lots of people, and that's when dramatic things can happen.

Point being that investors banking on renters being able to pay off their mortgages for them are leaving themselves very exposed. Of course, having to sell an investment property and take some financial losses is nothing compared to being homeless, which is what happening to renters when they can't afford a home anymore.

I hate to show my financial ignorance... as I've pretty much avoided all things investment all my life... it bores me to tears... even when Im making money... but here goes...

I agree governments and banks will do all in their power to prop up the ponzi...

but what is obvious to me, is that there is always something totally unforseen, or a combination of things, that sets of major disruptions, the perfect storm scenario...

re. this...

".......blind and idiotic borrower behaviour..."

this doesn't just apply to strugglers getting into the market, what's clear to me, is there's some big property portfolios out there, with the set up equity having been stretched to the max, on a constantly flat out market...

when I was buying property and doing research, it was made clear to me, your average houses don't boom and bust so much, it's the high end prices, hobby farms, and holiday homes that do, as their is a much smaller pool of buyers for these properties...

now there's got to be a large amount of self deluded astute investors out there that have portfolios loaded with these risk properties in the contemporary climate... which would also include some fairly modest average houses in sydney, melbourne, and coastal areas, and not just the niche stuff...

and here's where my ignorance comes in...

if we see a moderately substantial fall in these somewhat fringe markets value (which is big chunks of money given current values...)....banks will do a kind of 'margin call' on these over extended investors. ...in the current climate that wouldn't take much of a fall on 'average' house values for a significant correction on these more niche markets...

and that is where I see the pending snowball / house of cards correction being spawned...

that, and inflation pushing up interest rates, which, by all accounts, is pretty much a given...

some wondered way back where the inflation was coming from if wages are stagnant...

it's been well reported in the US that component and other supply chain bottleknecks are creating inflation due to corona, compounded by the suez thing...

and, I know on good authority that just sourcing containers can be up to 4 x higher...

neither of these things are going anywhere soon with the current corona mutations and ugly outlook china trajectory

it would appear these problems have long way to go panning out... and it's all heading one way atm after a brief reprieve...

Quint wrote:

House prices are so overcooked that a jubilee is inevitable, but a chip in the wrist or forehead might be the trade-off this jubilee, as per Revelation 13-16.

underrated comment, Quint :)

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be; / For loan oft loses both itself and friend.” I'll raise you a little Shakespeare.

Can you imagine if anything like this were to happen:

http://www.siouxcityhistory.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=articl...

"On April 21, 1893, the federal gold reserve limit was reached. The financial community began to panic. Banks and investors began to worry that loans would be paid for with less valuable silver. Banks began calling in their loans, and businesses began to fail.

In Sioux City, many of the booming businesses were being run with a great deal of borrowed money. When the big eastern banks called in their loans, no one could pay. On Tuesday, April 23, 1893, the Union Loan and Trust Company and Hedges Trust Company collapsed in bankruptcy. Daniel Hedges also announced that he was personally bankrupt.

The April 26, 1893 issue of the Sioux City Journal stated: “A number of Sioux City companies have been doing business on too small capital. They have been floating their paper through the Union Loan and Trust Company, which has endorsed and guaranteed a great deal of it. During the hard times which we have been experiencing, the eastern creditors have refused to extend this paper or take more of it.” "

Could you imagine the loans called in en masse? That would be Mad Max-level carnage in Australia today. It would be the situation they'd do anything to avoid.

Look to the US last week, the Fed hinted at two interest rate rises in 2023. 2 years away. St Louis Fed chair Bullard then made a statement that was more hawkish. The market sold off hard, on the 'idea' of two rate rises some time away. The world is that indebted. There have been 16 Fed speakers scheduled this week to make statements (probably mostly soothing) to repair this.... It's clown world.

Oh my, you haven't improved at all have you blowin.
For years you've been saying housing prices are too high due to immigrants.
Then when covid hit you were saying housing prices were going to fall by 30% because the immigrants and students couldn't get into the country.
When housing prices still rose while the population decreased it was still the immigrants fault because Aussies were acting irrationally due to FOMO caused by immigration over the previous decade.
Farrrk me, that's some truly tortured logic mate.

Blowin "

Its probably safe to say that housing prices are driven by many different factors, yeah at the moment there is no immigration so other factors are driving up prices(some very unique), but it also doesn't mean that imigration hasn't been a factor in property price increases in the past or wont be again in the future.

image upload

VL it's true immigration was not running in the form of 2015-19, however we have had expatriation at a rate approaching 500,000 per year (confirmed over time in msm; when beforehand they trotted out '40,000 to return' constantly). This massive rate of people coming in by my rough calculation is actually more than most of the years leading up to covid (immigration minus emigration). This is assuming no-one is allowed to leave: however again, many people have jumped on a plane to go overseas for various reasons as we saw in little vignettes of those returning from the chaos in India.

This is all about numbers of people coming in, minus numbers going out and nothing to do with racism. If anything, I'd go out on a limb to suggest that those returning may see Australia as a haven from the virus overseas as a result of our approach to removing corona from our communities, and these people may have been working valuable jobs overseas and have had quite a bit of ca$h to buy a car/house/rental - adding to the amount of new currency printed and the beginning of Australian QE. So the people influx has continued. End result is there goes the neighbourhood - into million dollar median price range.

Yeh Blowin those apartments might be a roof over your head for some folk, but there aren’t too many out there that wanna live in them, let alone buy them, hence the price drops. They weren’t popular pre-covid and they sure as shit won’t be now.

It’s also been reported that they are a haven for drug deals and sex workers, so I think most will pass, even with the discounted prices.

"Yeh Blowin those apartments might be a roof over your head for some folk, but there aren’t too many out there that wanna live in them, let alone buy them, hence the price drops. They weren’t popular pre-covid and they sure as shit won’t be now.

It’s also been reported that they are a haven for drug deals and sex workers, so I think most will pass, even with the discounted prices."

...sounds like a perfect opportunity to aquire some much needed social housing... seems it's already been acculturated...

jokes aside... it does sound like a perfect opportunity...

however, I imagine the righteous and pompous that assess such things would find a litany of reasons not to make the most of such an opportunity...

and whilst most of these reasons would be fair and reasonable points... I know there's a heap of crew that would much rather take their chances in that environnent then be stuck in the overpriced, to the point of unafforadable, and insecure rental market...

but another problem would be the righteous and pompous that make these decisions, would not aquire the properties at an appropriate price... thus ripping off the public... again... and not making the developers wear the appropriste loss they gambled...

again...

thats actually a really good idea Syppo.

Blowin 7:08 that's actually really good news, and evidence of a market actually adjusting downward into affordability when artificial demand is removed... a functioning market, who would have thought we would see it in our lifetimes!

Lived near Battle St Mossie Park when 18/19, that was the kind of environment you guys describe, many characters & stories (& theft and vice)

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/senior-mps-see-their-investments...

At least there’s a few questions being asked:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-28/can-regional-property-boom-contin...

indo-dreaming wrote:

brutus wrote:

indo-dreaming wrote:

freeride76 wrote:

Anyone here brave enough to predict a crash, or even a modest correction?

Cant see it happening, can only see stagnation and very modest corrections in next few years and then in time more rises, im predicting just more of what we have seen for the last 20 years.

Off course i have zero expertise in this area, just my 2 cents worth.

there has to be a correction as we are now in new economic territory....real estate prices booming , art sales booming , even surfboard/surfwear sales booming ...but wages are stagnant ! of

the low interest rates are part of the problem as money is so cheap there is not much interest to pay back and with negative gearing it's a boom period for those with cash and or great credit lines......feels like there are a lot of rich people who have got a lot richer and they are out there spending outrageous sums of money like retail therapy....and comfort shopping all rolled into one.....but we are now facing an unprecedented conditions in the Global economy....inflation is now ramping up at levels never seen before. Jerome Powell chairman of the USA fed , recently said the inflation is just short term...he changed his mind last week as the core inflation in the USA just hit 4.3% , fastest growth in 30 years and reports are it's going to double in the next 12 mths..........
The only remedy for slowing inflation is increasing interest rates.....so the question is what's driving inflation so hard......or why are the cost of goods going thru the roof ......so the correction is coming , but no-one knows how bad.......

Maybe, it's just people even experts have been saying the same for 25 years, so I've got to the point now where im thinking maybe their wrong and maybe it will keep going on the same little cycle.

I think the wage growth thing though is misleading, i don't how they calculate it, but i dont know anyone who's wages are truely stagnant, even my wife in a low paid aged care job has seen her hourly rate increase quite a bit in the last ten years, in 2019 Australia had the highest min wage in the world and we are still number two in the world.

The inflation in the USA is a concern though if it also happens here, because yeah a decent to big increase in interest rates would be the killer.

The NSW Public sector has been getting under inflation 2.5% max (often lower depeding on strength of union) up until last year when good old gladys put in a wage freeze, which will pretty much only get reversed once we get a labor government. So they've definitely stagnated.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-28/can-regional-property-boom-contin...

I don't want my comment to come across as racist as I had no issue with it, just an observation, but the suburbs I used to live in which was in Glen Eira council area of Melbourne, before the coastal move earlier this year, was predominantly asians and eastern europeans. Very rarely at the playgrounds around our old place did you hear an aussie accent. And a lot of older asians too that walked the streets all day, looked as if they were the grandparents living with their adult kids. Could never work out why the area was such a hub of eastern euro's though, found it a bit unusual. It didn't bother me but my wife did often say how unfriendly people were, couldn't get a hello out of anyone at the park.

Now down the coast, complete opposite of course, aussies everywhere.

http://www.chincogan.com.au/property?property_id=757716. This sold within 1 day

Supafreak wrote:

http://www.chincogan.com.au/property?property_id=757716. This sold within 1 day

Almost 2 acres I'd say that's a bargain. 500m2 blocks in cabba on clothiers creek road advertised at $900-950k. I know which ones better value for money!!!

@donweather , it’s reasonably flat land too . Can see why it only lasted 1 day but how many can afford that price ?