'Declining moderately'
An interesting little snippet from the Reserve Bank's Board Minutes yesterday.
One might reasonably expect that the Reserve Bank is quite happy with Sydney prices declining by about 5 per cent over the past year, following a strong run.
There's been a bit of odd discussion and reporting of these trends in recent weeks.
The most expensive sectors of the housing market by price decile do tend to be 'thinner' and more illiquid, and as such they do indeed tend to be more volatile through the cycle.
But it's worth noting too that if the median price is down by 5 per cent, then that's the change in the median price; it can't all be driven by the top end or 'prime' properties!
The RBA is obviously clear on this point; not so sure about the burgeoning market commentariat, though!
There was also some interesting discussion of household debt trends, a subject that has been of considerable interest, both in Australia and overseas.
Jobs preview
A bit of a slow news day, then, evidently!
But a big release is due out tomorrow morning relating to the labour force, with the market anticipating a modest increase in employment.
The market median forecast expects the unemployment rate to remain flat at 5.4 per cent.
Hopefully there'll be an upside surprise in the offing given that jobs vacancies at the end of May were the highest in about four decades as a share of the labour force.
Find out tomorrow at 11.30...
