Has the market peaked?

Property market coalface

To find out what's going on, in my experience the best people to ask are often (i) mortgage brokers, and (ii) buyer's agents.

Cate Bakos Sunday blog (click on the link or image below):

China's Lehman moment...again...

Default confirmed

China's second largest property developer Evergrande has finally defaulted on its debt mountain, and financial markets were a little spooked overnight, not for the first time. 

Of course, one never knows what might happen when it comes to debt defaults and contagion, although there is likely to be a good deal of government intervention to restructure the debt. 

Indeed given recent actions it wouldn't be surprising to see Chinese credit and real estate loan growth start to rebound from these lows.

In fact, if you look at a 6-month impulse things have arguably already been rebounding.

As for whether there will be direct fallout for Australian sentiment and the local real estate market, probably not (after all, the actual bankruptcy of Lehman didn't crash the Aussie market in 2008, following the various policy responses). 

We discussed the latest related news here (or click on the image below):

Record wealth for Aussies; mortgage rates to rise

Australian wealth soars

Australian household wealth has risen sharply over the past two years, as stock markets rebounded and housing prices and superannuation balances increased. 

Fixed mortgage rates are well off their lows now, with Westpac announcing more increases yesterday.

It's not so for variable mortgage rates...at least, not yet.

And with all the refinancing going on, across all outstanding housing loans savings are still being made. 

There were plenty of other interesting trends besides in the Reserve Bank's December chart pack.

Omicron strain won't impact property trends

Taking the strain

A few thoughts on the latest virus variant, and property trends...check it out here (or click on the image below):

Big city movement at 7-month high, but...

Cities on the move

Movement in Sydney and Melbourne is approaching 50 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, for the first time since April 2021, according to the latest analysis from Roy Morgan Research.

Other cities are much further advanced in their recovery in movement data. 

Adelaide is already at 87 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, Perth is at 81 per cent, and Brisbane 75 per cent. 

Source: Roy Morgan

It's good to see things happening again, but it's clearly going to be quite some time before things get back to normal, especially for Sydney and Melbourne. 

You can get the full research and article from Roy Morgan here.

2021: The year in review

Stocks up strong in 2021

We took a look back at the past year, particularly in the stock market.

Tune in here (or click on the image below):

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Yardney interview

Yardney interview

I recently interviewed property supremo Michael Yardney on his 50 years in property.

You can now catch the YouTube version below:

Listings fell in November, but not here...

Listings tighten a bit

After the surge of listings from October, we might have expected to see total listings higher by the end of November.

But it was not to be so.

Listings declined from 239,866 to 233,716, according to SQM Research, as older listings were mopped up by buyers. 

Two cities did see a modest increase in listings, though: Sydney (again), and Canberra. 

Brisbane now only has 19,305 listings, way down from over 29,000 a year earlier. 

Over the year, only Darwin saw an increase in listings, up 18 per cent. 

Everywhere else, stock is tighter ago a year ago.

Lots of auctions again this week, helping to becalm the market, with more than 6,300 scheduled.

Normally the Christmas period is quiet for property market transactions, but not this year.