What you need to know about the 2020 Budget

2020 vision

Run through the key figures with Stuart Wemyss of ProSolution here (or click on the image below):

Stock declines in September (unusual for Spring)

Listings down

Stock listings declined in September to be -7.4 per cent lower than a year earlier, according to SQM Research.  

The monthly decline was largely driven by a -4.2 per cent drop in Melbourne. 

A decline in total listings is unusual for the spring selling season. 

From a year earlier there have been huge percentage declines in stock in Darwin (-27 per cent) and Hobart (-18 per cent).

Melbourne stock is flat year-on-year with 34,771 listings (with new listings down more than 50 per cent), but Sydney was some way higher than a year ago at 31,429. 

All other capitals were tighter year-on-year.

Nationally there were 289,566 listings as at September 2020, compared to 312,754 a year earlier, according to SQM. 

SQM reported in its media release that absorption rates were improving following an increase in buyer activity over the month.

There have also been increases in asking prices, auction clearance rates, and housing finance approvals. reported SQM.

Is Perth property about to boom?

Perth boomtime

Is Perth about to boom?

The NAB survey today certainly suggests so.

In Q3 Business Conditions for Western Australia practically exploded higher from a reading of 2 to 25, while business confidence went from a negative reading of -1 all the way up to 10 across a single quarter of trading. 

Source: NAB

Having barely been touched by COVID-10 since April, the local jobs market is clearly enjoying the stimulus, and jobs vacancies for Western Australia are suddenly at the highest level since the resources boom years. 

Is Perth property about to boom, then?

I discussed this key question with Peter Gavalas, local Perth property market expert and buyer's agent.

Watch tonight's webinar at the link here (or see below):

You can get our free market analysis for Western Australia at BuyersBuyers.com.au here. 

Perth property webinar tonight

Perth & WA property webinar

Register for tonight's Perth webinar here (or click on the image below):

Thinks are at last really picking up in Western Australia, and the rental market is becoming very tight.

Therefore, in a slight change to the schedule we're speaking with local market expert and buyer's agent Peter Gavalas of Resolve Property in Perth. 

Note the time is at 7pm WA time (i.e. later in on the east coast).

You can register for free - see you there and then.

Podcast episode #25: Industry cycles - This is how to invest in sectors

Podcast: Industry cycles

Tune in here to this week's episode, where we discuss capital cycle theory (or click on the image below):

You can also tune in at Soundcloud, Stitcher, or Spotify.

Don't forget to leave us a friendly review, as it helps us to get the word out. Cheers! 

You can also order a copy of our new book here, and download a free chapter here.

Hammer time

Melbourne re-opens

Sydney's auction market, on the generally quiet long weekend, saw a very solid 73.2 per cent preliminary auction clearance rate, as confidence continues to build. 

Canberra again saw the strongest results, with a 75.6 per cent preliminary clearance rate. 

Source: CoreLogic

In Melbourne, actual auction volumes remain close to record lows at this stage.

However, the all-important leading indicator is that pre-listing activity is up 27 per cent in Melbourne, according to CoreLogic's statistics. 

Moreover, in real time statistics will only ever tell part of the story.

That's why the best real-time indicators tend to come from mortgage brokers and buyer's agents at the 'coal face' of the industry.

To that end, the top buyer's agent in Victoria Cate Bakos reports on the surging sentiment in Melbourne and Victoria here. 

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The 7-day average for newly confirmed cases is now at the lowest level in the 109 days since June 17, at under 15. 

New South Wales hasn't seen a single domestic or community case in 9 days, and there's nothing else outside Victoria either.

Victoria has three cases remaining in ICU, of which one remains on a ventilator. 

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I recently also discussed the latest trends in Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane with the top buyer's agents in their respective markets. 

There's also now a link you can follow to our Sydney webinar here. 

Riding the K-wave

K-shaped bounce

The 'K-shaped recovery' refers to an economy emerging from recession, the component parts of which recover at different times or rates. 

As one of the more interest rate sensitive sectors of the economy, it's not unexpected that the housing market could lead the rebound.

And so it is proving, with stock selling faster than it's being brought to market, as already previously highlighted by CoreLogic. 

Days on market have tumbled to 44 days at the national level - charting via Morgan Stanley Research.

Source: Morgan Stanley Research

Meanwhile vendor discounting has all but disappeared, with national vendor discounting improving to sit at the strongest level in at least 15 years. 

All aboard the K-wave. 

US unemployment falls to 7.9pc

US employment snapshot

No need here for further daft commentary on the US developments overnight.

The nonfarm payrolls figures just dropped, so here's a 30-second snapshot of what's going down in the final full update before the US election day on November 3. 

A miss on the headline numbers, with nonfarm payrolls up by +661,000 in September some way behind the +850,000 expectation, but July and August were revised up by a combined +145,000, so it wasn't a huge miss.

This was the 5th consecutive monthly gain for employment, following the catastrophic 21 million decline in April, and 11½ million jobs have now been recovered. 

Total nonfarm payrolls of 141.720 million were still some 9.8 million lower than a year earlier, despite the rebound.

With the participation rate dropping from 61.7 per cent to 61.4 per cent in September, the unemployment rate also fell for a 5th consecutive month, now down to 7.9 per cent, having initially run close to 15 per cent back in April. 

The number of unemployed persons fell by 1 million to 12.6, which was a 5th straight monthly decline.

The underemployment rate also continued to fall to 12.8 per cent, well down from the April peak of 22.8 per cent. 

Not great, but the US economy is at least steadily healing...if not the political landscape.