Archive for the ‘Interest Rate Updates’ Category

How much more finance for housing is there likely to be over the next 12 months?

Tuesday, March 6th, 2012

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released its monthly housing finance numbers for October this week which provided some interesting reading.  Broadly speaking, the results are split by investment finance commitments and owner occupier commitments.  For the owner occupier commitments the ABS publishes data which shows both the volume and ...

Dispelling the myths about our new Index methodology

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

RP Data along with our strategic partners Rismark International released two world firsts this week; the world’s first genuine “daily” house price index suite, which will cover all the major cities and the national market. the world’s first house price indices that track the change in the value of the overall asset ...

Jobs remain heavily centralised within the capital cities

Monday, February 27th, 2012

We have suggested several times on our research blog that, as a nation, Australia needs to see more geographic diversity in the labour market.  A wider geographic distribution of full time employment opportunities would imply a lessening in demand pressures in capital city housing markets and an improvement in regional ...

Will the resources sector continue to ‘boom’?

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012

Well, the experts certainly think so.  If you have any interest in the resources sector, arguably the best source for information is the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE).  Their most recent forecast for the 2011/12 financial year is a 15% increase in the value of Australian energy minerals ...

New mortgage commitments setting the scene for improved buying activity

Sunday, February 19th, 2012

The number of housing finance commitments continued to improve in December, rising 8.7% over the quarter according to the seasonally adjusted series from the ABS released this week.  The adjusted figures for December were the highest since March 2010; a strong sign that a degree of health is returning to ...

Finance approvals increase along with values in November…better times ahead?

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

The volume of housing finance commitments to owner occupiers increased for the eighth consecutive month in November, up 1.4% over the month and 4.6% over the year.  Of course, from a housing market perspective it is important to separate owner occupier commitments for refinances and non-refinances.  Refinances create business for ...

100 suburbs with the highest gross value of home sales

Saturday, February 11th, 2012

The real estate industry is doing it tough.  Transaction volumes last year were about 13% lower than 2010, 26% lower than 2009 and 33% lower than the recent highs of 2007.  A slightly larger decrease applies to real estate agent commissions, due to the fact that agents are generally paid ...

How has the rate of decline in the Aussie housing market measured against the US, UK and NZ?

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Based on CoreLogic’s House Price Index (HPI), it’s been 69 months since the US housing market peaked.  Since the national index for ‘single family combined homes’ reached its high point back in April 2006, US home prices have fallen by 32.8%. The first three years of US home prices coming down ...

The gap between variable and fixed interest rates has just passed a historic peak. Is it time to fix?

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

An interesting fact in the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics Housing Finance data was the continued trend towards fixed rate loans.  The data showed that over the month of November 11.1% of borrowers opted for a fixed rate mortgage; that’s the highest percentage of fixed rate commitments since June 2008.  ...

NAB Challenge Rising Interest Rates

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

NAB has challenged others of the big four on rising interest rates. If the RBA raise rates by another 0.25% today as expected, NAB have made a promise to it's growing customer base that they will not raise by any higher than the amount that the RBA raise by. This ...