Changing of the guard

Shift change

Stock listings declined by 1.4 per cent in October 2017, to be 4.6 per cent lower year-on-year, according to data reported by SQM Research. 

Having been depressed for some years now, listings in Australia's most populous city are now reverting higher - listings in Sydney are some 17 per cent higher than a year earlier. 

Listings also increased in the month of October in Canberra (up +2.8 per cent) and Adelaide (up +2.6 per cent). 

Focus is gradually shifting towards other cities, particularly those with a resources bent, with listings declining in October in Brisbane (-1.4 per cent), Perth (-1 per cent), and Darwin (-2.6 per cent). 

Over the year to October the decline in listings nationally has been driven by Melbourne, with stock levels down by another 12 per cent.

If this trend persists Melbourne will have fewer listings than Sydney before the year is out. 

Asking prices for houses in Melbourne are up by a thumping 21 per cent since October 2016. 

In booming Hobart total listings declined to only 2,377, to be 25 per cent lower than a year ago. 

Listings normally record a pre-Christmaas rise in November, according to SQM Research, so expect to see a bit of an uptick next month.

I'll tumble 4 ya...

No inflationary pressures

The iron ore price hits its lowest level in 4 months in light of new restrictions in Tangshan on sintering and pulverising. 

Now trading at just $58.75/tonne, the 62% Fe Fines benchmark spot price for iron ore has been crunched by 27 per cent since the August highs. 

Another soft indicator!

With index re-weighting threatening to pull core inflation further below the target range, cash rate futures markets are gradually waking up to reality.

And with Amazon and other international entrants set to disrupt the Australian market forthwith, significant price pressures in the retail sector appear most unlikely to materalise over the years ahead.

Over-estimating the rate of inflation has not only been plaguing Australia's central bank in recent years, it's been playing out all around the world.

Still, it'll be very interesting to see how the Reserve Bank pitches its inflation forecasts in light of last week's soft report.

I looked at the report for the September quarter in just a little bit more detail here.

Even the moderate rate of inflation had little to do with wages picking up, being lifted by electricity and gas prices, and taxes on tobacco. 

Futures markets are still pricing the next move in the cash rate as being up, just not for quite a while. 

Down payment blues

Construction

It's been a remarkable few years for dwelling construction in Queensland, especially for high-rise apartments, but the boom times for development are drawing to a close. 

The amplitude of this cycle has been on a par with Queensland's dwelling construction boom of 1994.

Back then about a quarter of dwellings built were multi-units, but the ratio has twice as great this time around, accounting for more than half of the total by 2015. 

With lenders now tightening deposit requirements for apartment buyers across a swathe of inner Brisbane postcodes, as well as developer insolvencies peppering the newswires, there's no doubt that dwellings starts for apartments will continue to drop precipitously from the latest reported numbers. 

On the positive side, the most timely population estimates suggest that both interstate and net overseas migration are swinging sharply in Queensland's favour, so this should help to mop up the excesses over time. 

Tenants are centralising and moving in too, slowly but surely.

Still, it's clearly going to be a renter's market in 2018, and, if my inbox is any kind of worthy indicator, there's going to be some material discounting on unsold new apartment stock. 

Investors with the means should keep a watchful eye out for bargains next year. 

Empty nests

There's been plenty of spirited debate concerning how many apartments in Australia have been deliberately kept empty by investors from the Chinese mainland. 

No doubt this has been a factor in today's markets, with the Census confirming that nearly 1.1 million dwellings were empty on Census night (about 11 per cent of the total), while many more are under-utilised.

Interestingly, though, only Greater Sydney (7.3 per cent) had a lower vacancy rate than Greater Brisbane (7.6 per cent) on Census night, according to the official ABS figures. 

Moreover, more in-depth research by Terry Rawnsley of SGS Economics & Planning unearthed that the reasons for dwellings being unoccupied were both varied and plausible.

For the stock constructed over the four years to 2016, the national vacancy rate on Census night increased to 17 per cent, so arguably there may have been a growing trend towards leaving new apartments vacant.

For some perspective, though, a quick Google Maps scroll over the growing cities of China suggests that anything happening in the empty apartment space in Australia is comparatively speaking small fry!

Weekend reads: Must see articles of the week

Summarised for you here at Property Update.

Lay of the land

Land prices soar

How much is Australia's land worth?

The answer is about $5.8 trillion, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures for the 2017 financial year.

That's well over 3 times the level of Australia's GDP of around $1.7 trillion. 

And, at just under $4.8 trillion, about 83 per cent of that dollar value related to land zoned for residential use (up from just 63 per cent in 1989, when the data series commences). 

Of course, the ABS figures are quite rightly presented in current prices, and do not attempt to account for the twin impacts of inflation and Australia's significant population growth.

Nevertheless, the figures do show why individual or 'Mum and Dad' investors are drawn towards residential property over commercial investments.

Since the population is growing and everyone needs somewhere to live, there is more competition for residential land - especially in the big capital cities - and therefore values have risen over the long term. 

At the state level, the strong 5-year uplift in residential land values has mainly been driven by New South Wales and Victoria.

Again, these are also the states generating the bulk of economic activity and population growth, so that's to be expected to some extent.

But even accounting for population growth, the uplift in nominal land values was once again huge during the 2017 financial year, with total residential land values rising by about 16 per cent in each of the most populous states. 

As you can see in the above chart, the value of land zoned for housing has all but increased by a lazy couple of trillion dollars through this cycle to date.

In Victoria the total value of residential land sits at about $1.3 trillion, and in New South Wales the figure is now approaching $2 trillion. 

The total value of residential land in both states has comfortably more than doubled since 2009. 

On the other hand, one jurisdiction has seen the total value of its residential land in decline since the 2014 financial year as the resources boom years faded: the Northern Territory. 

Isentia crashes again

Crashed down by another 41 per cent today on another trading update.

Sad news for shareholders that were encouraged to pay such an expensive price for a stock.

Magnetic north

Unemployment ticks down

There's been no shortage of people on hand to announce that the end of the world is nigh for Sydney. 

Perhaps it is, but no-one seems to have gotten around to telling the Greater Sydney economy just yet, as employment growth continues to surge and the city's annual average unemployment rate just keeps on falling, and falling...and falling, towards historic lows. 

The median duration of job search in Sydney has tightened to 13 weeks in September 2017, down from 18 weeks a year earlier.

There have also been notable improvements in the unemployment rate in Adelaide and Hobart lately.

Magnetic north

Perhaps the standout statistic from the detailed labour force figures, though, has been the synchronised upswing in Queensland employment. 

Now the monthly numbers are noisy, there's no question about that, but even when plotting the figures on an annual average basis you can't help but notice the rebound leaping off the chart at you.

Brisbane's recent employment growth has been punctuated mainly by part-time jobs. 

But one more pleasing thing to see is that the state's full-time employment rebound has been spread widely across the state, from the Gold Coast to Toowoomba, and up to the Sunshine Coast, Mackay, Townsville, and even Cairns up in the far north. 

In aggregate, Queensland's regional employment growth is now tracking at levels not seen in a decade. 

Queensland now finds itself in the dizzily unfamiliar position of having added about 99,000 jobs on a net basis over the year to September 2017, around 57,000 of which have been full-time positions.

This is not to downplay the impact of the mining downturn on a number of prominent cities and regions - which ranged from tough to downright severe - but there's been an notable improvement in conditions.

Today's export price figures give one useful clue as to why: coal export prices in the September quarter are still levitating 62 per cent higher than a year earlier.

There has also been a marked drop in the unemployment rate in Cairns, which looks to be in the best nick for a decade, supported by the lower dollar.

Follow the figures

Rest assured, there's always someone on hand to note that the numbers must be wrong or misleading.

Look, possibly.

So be it, statistics can certainly give false signals, but equally, the plural of anecdote is not data - if there's one thing I learned from the Sydney boom over the past decade it's that people can miss out on big trends by tuning into background noise. 

To date, there's been a good deal of road building and dwelling construction in Queensland, and the tourism sector has been thriving in certain parts.

It'll be interesting to see if the recovery becomes more broad-based through 2018...

Missing: one inflation target!

Inconvenient...strewth

Bill Evans of Westpac put out a prescient note last week entitled "Inflation - an inconvenient truth", detailing why inflationary pressures would likely remain soft, possibly with a slowing momentum.

His conclusion was that rate hikes were neither an attractive nor a necessary option given current conditions. And, by no means for the first time, how prophetic his warnings proved to be! 

Headline inflation undershot expectations coming in at a decidedly limp 0.6 per cent for the September quarter, in spite of the expected surge in energy costs (electricity prices shot up by 8.9 per cent in the quarter). 

It's always worth remembering that although inflation is typically reported as one figure, while some things may be getting more expensive, others often aren't. And quite a lot of consumer prices are getting cheaper right now. 

Food prices fell this quarter, for example, as the recent run-up in the price of vegetables eased, while fuel prices also declined, as did all those items categorised as 'communication'. 

The annual headline rate of inflation dropped back to just 1.8 per cent, with an array of consumer items now sitting at their cheapest level in decades, including cars, televisions, phones, computers, and some clothing.

You can see some of the competitive pressures for yourself in the retail sector - just have a stroll around a few household goods stores and take in the vibe - and there doesn't appear to be many suggestions that significant pricing power will be returning to retailers any time soon.

Missing in action

The analytical or underlying measures of inflation were also weak and very weak respectively, printing at the meagre average of just 0.35 per cent for the quarter, meaning that the core rates of inflation are also tracking well under the target range, both in quarterly and annualised terms.

In fact, inflation has been under the target 2 to 3 per cent range for eight consecutive quarters now, normally a sign that monetary conditions have, if anything, been too tight.

If you were being generous you might argue that at least underlying inflation hasn't decelerated year-on-year in the September quarter, but regardless it's yet another miss, with possible downside risks to the next quarter.

Tradables deflate

Tradables inflation is, well, not inflating...

Granted, there was a bit of a lift in non-tradables inflation to 3.2 per cent over the year, although this had very little to do with stronger wages, the rise being largely driven by electricity and a good old 'sin tax' on 'baccy.

Rates on hold?

Overall, this was another soft result, which makes the talk of rate hikes any time soon look to be wide of the mark, not least because prospective revisions to the index weights - the weights being reviewed every six years - may yet trim a couple of further percentage points off the rate of inflation (some analysts think more).

The most likely outlook appears to be the cash rate remaining on hold over the next year, although surely at some point we must due an negative employment report or two, which might just spice things up a bit. 

Rents also remain soft

At the national level rents were only 0.5 per cent higher over the year to September, which represents the slowest annual pace of rental price inflation in 23 years. 

Again this masks wide variations within the sub-indices, with rising rents in some cities - most markedly Hobart - offset by year-on-year declines in Perth and Darwin, with Brisbane now finally joining the declining rents party, as discounted apartment rents are at last reflected in the official statistics.

In Sydney record levels of apartment building have slowed the pace of rental price inflation, though nothing more than that. 

Indeed, rental price inflation in Sydney remains well ahead of the consumer price index for the harbour city, as accelerated population growth has absorbed the new supply.

Rents in Sydney have been outpacing CPI over the course of more than a decade, according to the ABS figures. 

Exodus!

Census findings

Further interesting news from the 2016 Census has been released.

Some of it is rather open to interpretation. For example, there was lower employment in the younger age bracket, comprising 15-24 year olds.

But, on the other hand, 22 per cent of the population now have a degree or higher level of qualification. 

That's up +3.2 per cent from 2006-2011, replicating the same percentage increase as five years earlier, according to ID, the population experts.

Employment opportunities were certainly curtailed by the financial crisis and resources downturn, but we're also studying longer, so it's a somewhat mixed picture.

Exodus!

Similarly, there's quite a bit been said on the apparent mass exodus from Sydney.

Again, there's a strong element truth to this story.

But it's equally important not to take away the wrong visual image from this. 

The fact is, New South Wales always loses people interstate, and it always will, largely to Brisbane, south east Queensland, and even to Melbourne.

In reality, though, the numbers leaving the state on a net basis were dramatically lower in the 2011-2016 Census period than they were in the preceding five years.

And they were much, much lower than they were in the five years before that, with net interstate migration tracking at way under the half the rate of seen from 2001 to 2006.

To the regions...

Now it's true that more people, especially Baby Boomers, have been taking their newly-boosted Sydney equity to move out to regional New South Wales, such as to the Hunter Valley, or to the South Coast.

However, this has been offset by a marked increase in immigration to Sydney, as migrants seek employment opportunities.

The harbour city of Greater Sydney is growing at a faster pace than previously, probably now at somewhere close to 100,000 per annum, which is well ahead of the decade average.

This will presumably continue for as long as Sydney continues to create record job openings. 

The net impact of this dynamic - high immigration and resident Sydneysiders moving outwards or interstate - is that Sydney has a substantial foreign-born population (which now comprises more Chinese-born residents than British-born, a remarkable statistic in its own right).

There's plenty of disingenuous 'analysis' of the capital city economies, focusing on resources exports and ignoring services exports, for example, while also ignoring Australia's record levels of household wealth and the comparative improvement in standard of living for so many immigrants.

The Productivity Commission ("PC") has delivered another long report on the importance of the large cities to Australian wealth, and why services industries and employment growth fare best within them, in part due to proximity to other businesses and labour supply.

The fact is that over the most recent year Sydney (38.6 per cent) and Melbourne (28.4 per cent) have unsurprisingly dominated contributions to Australia's GDP growth, according to analysis by Terry Rawnsley of SGS Economics & Planning.

Challenges abound

All of the above having been said, it's reasonable expect to see interstate migration to south east Queensland accelerating again over the next five years.

One of the most noteworthy challenges identified by the PC is that about 60 per cent of new jobs are created within 10 kilometres of the Central Business Districts, but housing supply in those locations is not keeping up with this pace of growth by about half.

The PC found that most jobs that can be reached within 45 minutes by car are located in the inner city, while on the city fringe this is the case for fewer that 20 per cent of jobs.

By 2050 an additional 10.8 million people are projected to be living in Australia's capital cities, as well as an extra 2.4 million people in the non-capital city areas. 

Fat of the land

Land prices soar

Land is arguably the most important part of any property investment.

It can't be removed, relocated, destroyed, or replaced. 

The Housing Industry Association (HIA) reported today that Australia's median lot value rose by +8.5 per cent in the 2017 financial year to a record high of $256,683.

This came in spite of about a 9 per cent year-on-year decline in turnover, suggesting that supply may still be struggling to keep up with demand. 

All land is not created equal, of course, even within cities.

It's considerably scarcer in 'landlocked' locations in the capital cities than it is out on the city fringe. 

In Melbourne the median lot value exploded by +19.6 per cent over the financial year. 

In Sydney the median price of vacant land also rose by +9.8 per cent. 

Sydney's lot sizes have been shrinking over the years, too.

Indeed, the price of vacant land per square metre in Sydney increased to beyond $1,000 for the first time.

At the national level, land values have increased by about 35 per cent since the 2012 financial year.

Negative skew

First-timers surge

It's been obvious that first homebuyers have been pouring back into the major housing markets since the beginning of July.

The housing finance figures, although to date only running to the end of August, confirm as much.

The September and October figures will warrant watching closely when they are finally reported. 

This is potentially only part of the story, though, with many parents now helping their offspring onto the housing ladder. 

Some parents may be cash buyers, while others may simply be financing purchases themselves. 

'Negative skewness'

It was pointed out on the Property Chat forum that although the median auction result in Sydney remained very high on Saturday at $1,295,000, the average or mean result was considerably lower at a shade under $1 million. 

Compare this with the same weekend last year when the mean value of properties sold at Sydney auctions was far higher at well above $1.3 million.

There's a similar trend afoot in Melbourne, albeit not nearly as pronounced.

What gives? 

When the mean is lower than the median - such as was the case in Sydney's auction results this weekend - this indicates a left-skewed distribution, or 'negative skew'.

In other words, a spread of lower value transactions, potentially also suggesting a shift towards the first homebuyer cohort.

Note, however, that there will be many more auctions in Sydney next weekend, so in turn next week should deliver a much better guide to the state of the market.

More than 1,000 Sydney homes are scheduled to go under the hammer on 'Super Saturday', making it the second biggest weekend of the year. 

Gizza job!

How low can you go?

The New South Wales economy has added a stunning +123,800 full-time jobs over the past year.

And how low is the New South Wales unemployment rate now?

The answer is: very low at 4.6 per cent.

That's now equal to the lowest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in 9 years for the Premier State.

And the way things have been tracking, it may not be all that long before the unemployment rate across across the state approaches the lowest level on record, across decades of data.

In February 2008 the state's unemployment rate fleetingly plummeted to just 4.2 per cent, if only for a month.

Casting one's mind back, that was an extraordinary time in Sydney's labour market.

With the mining boom in full swing, there was such a shortage of skilled labour that it felt at times you could get paid a bonus just for turning up to work, so fearful were employers of losing qualified staff.

Certainly pay rises were expected for tenure, while employees could easily leave a job in the full expectation of sourcing another position comparatively easily.

We're not seeing conditions anything like that just yet.

However, the Jobs Vacancies figures for New South Wales recently soared to the highest level ever recorded for any state or territory, suggesting that there may be further gains on the horizon. 

New South Wales is...'Making it Happen'!

Weekend reads: Must see articles of the week

See here, from the world's number 1 ranked real estate website, Property Update!

How'd you like them apples?

12 on the bounce

Goodness me, a thunderous +371,500 increase in Australian employment over the year to September 2017, for a massive increase of +3.1 per cent in the total number of employed to nearly 12.3 million. 

That makes it 12 months in a row for employment growth.

Meanwhile jobs vacancies have also increased to the highest level on record, meaning that there's likely to be at least some more good news in the post. 

Better still, the jobs boom has been driven by full-time jobs, with a cracking uplift of +316,000 over the year to September. 

The unemployment rate fell to 5.5 per cent, to sit at the lowest level in 4.5 years.

Female participation hit the highest level on record, while the total monthly number of hours worked was up by +3.4 per cent from a year earlier, the best annual result since those morose financial crisis days.

In trend terms, hours worked were a slightly more moderate +2.9 per cent higher. 

She'll be apples

Although things are looking a bit bleak in the Northern Territory, there has been positive news across most states. 

Although Victoria (+113,600) added the most jobs in absolute terms over the year, by far the fastest rate of annual employment growth is now held by Queensland at a thumping +4.1 per cent, following a prolonged dry spell. 

If this persists, it will likely result in a further rise in interstate migration to Queensland. 

New South Wales added another +21,100 jobs in September, and the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the state fell to a post-crisis low of just 4.6 per cent (and it's lower still in Sydney).

Plotting the figures in trend terms reveals a marked improvement for South Australia too. 

The wrap

Overall, there has been an massive increase in employment over the past year, especially full time employment. 

The good news is that it seems to have spread across the states. 

Household formation to surge

Formation

A valid point is raised here by fund manager roger: there's an awful lot of focus on population growth in Australian property market analysis, and not nearly enough on trends in household formation. 

The comment was posted in relation to another finely balanced article on roger's blog, entitled "PREPARE TO LOSE ENORMOUS [PROPERTY] WEALTH".

roger was prompted by one of the blog readers that had linked to a thing I wrote about accelerating population growth hoovering up the excess apartment supply in Melbourne. 

What can I say? Melbourne's riotous population growth has hoovered up the excess supply, and Victoria's population is now growing by ~150,000 per annum. 

In fact Melbourne is now diving headlong towards a rental crisis and increases in rents as the supply rolls over.

Formation rising

roger is quite right to note that household formation rather than population growth drives housing market demand.

The rate of household formation had been outpacing the rate of population growth in Australia for years, but echoing global post-financial trends this dynamic reversed during the last intercensal period from 2011 to 2016, partly due to under-building (at least initially), and partly driven by affordability challenges.

However, household formation is now expected to outpace population growth over the next two decades, according to research by BIS Oxford Economics, with the average household size resuming its downward trend. I'll take a look at the reasons why below. 

Let's not go over old ground, except to note in passing that roger's analysis of 18 months ago in May 2016 - partly derived from building approvals figures - concluded that Australia had an oversupply totalling in the hundreds of thousands of dwellings. 

The thing is, Australia will never have a massive oversupply of unsold new dwellings - projects simply don't get financed and built unless enough units are pre-sold.

It's true that the market anticipates demand incorrectly we can end up with an oversupply or mismatch of rentals temporarily, and sometimes in a downturn listings can rise sharply if owners dash for the exits.

But we haven't got hundreds of thousands of dwellings too many; not with the ramp up in headcount.

First homebuyer return

Since the introduction of new incentives, the number of dwellings financed by first homebuyers bolted to the highest level in 92 months in August 2017, so households are now being formed apace, especially in the two most populous states. 

There's much, much more to household formation than just this, though.

Recall I showed from the 2016 Census figures that Australia's migration programme has led to a demographic tsunami, being millions of 25 to 32 year-olds in Australia, about to swamp the housing markets, heavily focused on Sydney and Melbourne. 

Separate figures reporting the characteristics of recent migrants showed that it's overwhelmingly now the capital cities that are about to be swamped, because new migrants flock to the capital cities, and end up staying there. 

Many first-timers are electing to rent where they live, and are instead buying investment properties as their first step onto the ladder, so the real number of first-time buyers is tracking at close to the long run average. Plus there's the trend towards co-ownership, as recently reported. 

The 'bank of Mum & Dad'

Perhaps as significantly, there are the parents buying homes for their kids, which is new household formation not reported in the first homebuyer finance numbers. 

We are now seeing this going on practically all the time at auctions in Sydney and Brisbane - to be blunt, it pushes up prices - and evidently it's a big thing down in Melbourne and Geelong too. 

Cate Bakos of Cate Bakos Property in Melbourne notes that it's not only the first homebuyer sector that's being impacted by inherited money:

"Parents are impacting competition levels significantly. Firstly in the first homebuyer concession range - which is already screaming along with heightened borrowing capacity - and secondly the upgrader stakes. We are seeing and hearing of parents paying it forward with inheritance money."

Affordability has been a drag on household formation to some extent since the financial crisis.

However, this is projected to be more than offset by an ageing population - empty-nesters and downsizers - more divorces, more separations, widowhood, and a nascent yet growing trend towards lone-person households living in apartments. And that's before we mention all the empty dwellings.

Over the longer term, the ABS forecasts that the number of households will increase by well over 50 per cent to 12.7 million over the 25 years to 2036.

Boom & bust time

SQM Research's Louis Christopher has had a few minor skirmishes with fund manager roger in recent times, so it's intriguing - to me anyway - that SQM forecasts in its base case scenarios home prices rising in 2018 in all eight of the capital cities.

SQM has been Australia's most accurate forecasting house over recent years. 

SQM's base case scenario is upbeat about the prospects next year for Hobart (+8 to +13 per cent), Melbourne (+7 to +12 per cent), Sydney (+4 to +8 per cent), Adelaide (+0 to +4 per cent), Canberra (+5 to +9 per cent), and Brisbane (+3 to +7 per cent). 

And SQM also sees a positive turnaround for the resources capital city housing markets of Perth (+1 to +4 per cent) and Darwin (+1 to +4 per cent) in its base case. 

See here for more details of this year's Boom & Bust report. 

Touch too much

ASX catches a bid

"Sell everything!" came the cry.

"Get into cash and wait for better value!".

Unfortunately, the high priests of market timing might have had their holy garments pulled down a bit here. 

Wonder of wonders, the ASX has finally burst out of its tight trading range, having briefly traded above 5,900 in April and May. 

It's been stuck in a narrow band ever since. 

Until now...

Might it be time to dust of the 'XJO 6000' hats at last?

We dare to dream.

Investor beach ball submerged

Investor loans slowed

A nice pick-up in commercial lending to businesses in August 2017, which will hopefully flow through to business investment. 

Personal lending has dropped by a quarter since 2010 and is tracking at around the lowest level in 15 years. 

However, business lending is up +15 per cent from a year earlier, which is a positive for the economy. 

Lending for major renovations looks solid, but no more than that, while owner-occupier property lending is rising strongly in trend terms. 

The crackdown on investor lending has been marked. 

Mortgage Choice reported that interest-only loans accounted for only 14.64 per cent of loans written in September, down from 35.95 per cent in April. 

Thus the repricing of interest-only loans has been swift and effective. 

Interestingly, the slowdown in investor lending appears to have most impacted the states where investor lending was already moderate. 

The one state that does not appear to have been slowed too much is Victoria. 

As for the Top End, investor lending in Darwin is now well and truly dormant.

The heady mining boom years, but a distant memory in the Northern Territory!

The wrap

A solid result, then, for business lending. 

Although property investment loans have been slowed significantly, it may be too early to write off investors completely.

International experiences from countries such as New Zealand and the UK have shown that while macroprudential measures are effective in the short term, over time lenders and investors may find new ways to get business done. 

It's a bit like trying to hold a beach ball under water, sometimes. 

The one genuine fix would be higher interest rates.