The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released its latest Construction Work Done figures for the December quarter. Not surprising, residential housing activity looks to have peaked and should soon begin to decline. Broadly speaking, it’s fair to say that the story we have been telling on house prices hitting the... Show More
RBA Governor, Phillip Lowe, opened his speech at the AFR Business Summit this morning by saying “Australians watch housing markets intensely, perhaps more so than citizens of any other country.” Never has a truer statement been made. Whether you’re a stock market investor, a housing investor, or nothing of the... Show More
Australian house prices are falling. Credit availability is tightening. US mortgage rates are rising. These and other factors have put building materials stocks under pressure. In this paper we assess value across the building materials sector given our assessment of “mid-cycle” housing starts and take a view on where we... Show More
One of the most engaging parts of my role at Livewire is working with Australian fund managers to discuss their views and bring you great content. With over 400 managers now contributing to the platform, overseeing the content can feel like being at the epicentre of the market. So with... Show More
The newly appointed deputy chair of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) talking at a FINSIA conference last month said that APRA’s “stability measures” - in other words their restrictions on bank lending introduced last year - have helped prepare the Australian economy for “an unseasonable cold snap”. Really? Show More
This week on The Rules of Investing podcast, we've got a special episode featuring three guests from Future Generation (ASX:FGX & ASX:FGG). The Future Generation companies are set up to provide charities with an annual stream of donations, while providing shareholders with exposure to the best fund managers - free... Show More
Over the past year, Australian house prices have seen 12 consecutive months of decline, the longest streak of persistent falls in over 20 years. House prices are now ~4% lower than this time last year — the weakest performance in the housing market since 2012. Show More
A year ago, the property boom was showing signs of fading and we expected property prices to fall in Sydney and Melbourne by around 5-10%. Home prices were overvalued, affordability was very poor and tightening bank lending standards in response to pressure from the bank regulator APRA was expected to... Show More
The US Federal Reserve (the Fed) lifted interest rates to 2.25% as was widely expected in September and commented that monetary policy is no longer ‘accommodative’. Show More
In Australia today, growth is forecast to be around 2.5%, commodity prices are stable, jobs are strong, and inflation is low and stable. But in the background, risks are rising, explains Chris Rands from Nikko Asset Management. “The biggest risk that’s sitting there is the house price situation... The flow-through effect... Show More
House prices are falling, auction clearance rates continue to drop and there is a such sharp lift in the number of properties for sale that, for the moment, no one is willing to buy at the given asking price. Show More
Around 12 months ago, I shared my 10 predictions for FY18. These included a peak for the housing market, struggling retail stocks, and global macroeconomic strength. It was great to see that a lot of these predictions proved true. With FY18 now over, Livewire have asked for my predictions for... Show More
I have a friend who is mildly wealthy but not gainfully employed. He has been a customer of the same bank for the past 40 years. Like me, he doesn’t own a house. Unlike me, he has been thinking about it. Show More
A week after the fanfare of the 2018/19 Budget, we can soberly review some of the information and data that supports its projections. In the body of the Budget papers are a wealth of tables and charts that contain important observations and insights into the Australian economy. We scan through... Show More
In our latest 50-page report for funds and institutional investors, Chemical Change, we’ve conducted a detailed consideration of shifts in mortgage lending standards, and the likely outcomes from these changes. Highlighted below are three immediate implications. Show More
While the global economy is seeing its fastest growth in years and the US Federal Reserve has increased rates five times since December 2015 and is on track for more hikes this year, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has now left interest rates on hold for a record 21... Show More
Australian capital city home prices fell 0.2% in March, their fifth monthly fall in a row. This has brought annual growth down to 0.8% from 11.4% in May last year. Most of the recent weakness relates to Sydney and to a less extent Melbourne. Show More
FIIG Securities guest contributor, Stephen Koukoulas says for more than two years, the annual underlying inflation rate has been between 1.6 and 1.9 per cent, locked below the RBA 2 to 3 per cent target. Here he talks about what this means, and takes a look at the data on... Show More
If Australia has an Achille’s heal it’s the high and still rising level of household debt that has gone hand in hand with the surge in house prices relative to incomes. Whereas several comparable countries have seen their household debt to income ratios pull back a bit since the Global... Show More
Over the past 15 years Australian house prices have been on an incredible run, resulting in Australian households becoming some of the most indebted in the world. So what is the economic cost of Australia’s sky high property prices and what could it mean for property prices in 2018? Show More
