Tight stock
The housing market is a real mixed bag at the moment, with some brutal price declines in some of the popular pandemic regional hotspots, but a dearth of stock on the market in some of the city areas.
New listings fell -20 per cent in seasonally quiet January - driven by very large declines in Sydney and Melbourne - and were -14 per cent lower than 2022 figures.
Total listings on the market declined by -7 per cent to around 215,000.
January 2022 saw the tail-end of the Omicron lockdowns impacting activity, but the year-on-year changes in listings were fairly muted.
Only Hobart saw listings jump, almost doubling from a year ago as some vendors look to cash in on spectacular gains.
Overall, taking a bigger picture view, quality stock is hard to come by, and total stock levels were tight in January at around 215k *a far cry from 350k back in January 2012, for example).
Source: SQM Research
SQM noted that there are few forced sellers, and very few distressed listings, with most vendors looking to wait for the market recovery.
Rates increase
The Reserve Bank increased the cash rate target to 3.35 per cent as expected and flagged a likely further increase ahead, with market pricing suggesting that a hike in March is somewhat more likely than not.
Bonds sold off a little with the 3-year yield increasing back towards 3¼ per cent.
That is some way lower than the 3¾ per cent we saw in mid-2022, and competitive variable mortgage rates and some fixed rates have sharpened up a little over the past couple of months.
Still there looks to be some further pain to come for those with mortgage debt...and for renters with around 200,000 international students heading to Australia forthwith.
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Some reactions to today's hawkish message from the central bank.
