Leveraged beyond our means. That is the cause of the global financial crisis, according to The Age’s Ross Gittins.
“In the past decade, the housing boom — including the welter of negative gearing — has seen their total debt double relative to their disposable income from 80% to almost 160%.
That is our great vulnerability. If Australia [...]
Yale economist Robert J. Shiller has released a graph showing the change in American property values from 1890, and projected forward to 2011.
This data is based on using an 1890 property selling for the modern inflation-adjusted equivalent of $100,000 US. Property values experienced mini-booms in the 1970s and 1980s, but it is the enormous spike [...]
According to Professor Steve Keen, Australia’s property market is set to drop. What we’ve seen in America has been bad, but what we might be about to see here could be nasty. But then you’ve got other people (especially real estate agents) saying that supply is still outstripping demand, and therefore property prices can only [...]
The Reserve Bank of Australia has dropped interest rates for the first time in seven years. This will ease some of the pain for people struggling to pay off their mortgage, but will it help the real estate industry? I think it will … just a bit. It won’t send property prices skyward, but it [...]
The economy has slowed right down, so there is a strong expectation that the Reserve Bank might look at cutting the official interest rate, potentially saving a fair number of people from being forced to sell their home. According to Terry McCrann, a rates cut is a dead-set certainty:
“A rate cut at the September RBA [...]
According to the International Monetary Fund, the mortgage crisis in the USA will impact on other countries that rely on foreign borrowing, such as Australia. There have been a massive number of foreclosures in America already, and more are expected, the IMF report warning that:
“… with delinquencies and foreclosures in the US housing market rising [...]
A couple of years ago Western Australia was the place to buy, with the resources boom leading to a real estate boom. The geographically isolated city of Perth suddenly became one of the most expensive cities in Australia. Well, it looks like things might have become a little too big too quickly, as home repossessions [...]
Mortgage stress is a “cancer”, says Wizard Home Loan’s Mark Bouris, and it’s moving from the battler suburbs to the affluent people in places like Bondi. A joint survey by Wizard Home Loans and Fujitsu Consulting has found that 784,000 of Australia’s 8 million households suffer from some form of mortgage stress, a rise of [...]
Mortgage stress is at its highest in New South Wales, according to the Trends in Australian RMBS Collateral: 2004 -2007 report. The report analysed around a million mortgages totalling $178 billion, and found that 0.66 per cent of mortgages in NSW were 90 days past due, triple the rate of the rest of Australia. The [...]
“I think the industry as a whole is facing a similar situation that funding costs day-by-day are continuing to increase; it’s just a fact of the market.
The fact of the matter is, over time, interest rates being charged will increase unless we see significant drops in rates both internationally and locally.”
- Ralph Norris, CEO of [...]
