Vacancies decline again
Rental markets are set to tighten further as the international borders reopen, according to Domain.
The latest Domain index figures for September confirmed further tightening in Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, and Darwin.
Although there are still some rental vacancies in the major CBDs, overall rental markets are extremely tight, with the trend tightening quickly over the past year.
The rental shortage in some of the popular regional markets such as the Sunshine Coast is absolutely chronic.
It's only going to get worse from here for renters, as it's about to become harder for landlords to get a loan...again.
APRA announced today that serviceability buffers would be increased for new borrowers to 3 percentage points.
Of course, we won't get the equivalent of 12 (twelve!) interest rate hikes any time this millennium, so the benefits to the safety of individual borrowers is basically nil, but I guess the move is designed to cool the rate of housing credit growth.
There will be a modest downward adjustment to borrowing capacity for most new mortgage borrowers, though rules will be less stringent than was the case under the old 7¼ per cent buffer under the APG 223 guidance - as depicted in the stylised example below.
Overall, this is a fairly modest adjustment to the market, and not a bad one - it buys regulators some time to allow housing markets to come back into equilibrium, which they may do soon as listings increase from here.
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Natural gas prices are absolutely exploding, with UK gas prices up another 40 per cent in a single day.
Here's the stock price chart of one of our old Russian favourites, Gazprom:
Very healthy dividend returns for anyone buying stock over the past five years.
The PE has increased to about 9, but comparatively speaking the stock is still pretty cheap, even now.
