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21 December 2024
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Rising urban housing costs in Australia are outpacing wage growth, particularly in cities like Sydney and Melbourne. This is leading to an exodus of workers, especially in their 30s, from cities to regions.
Housing affordability is shaping up as a major topic as we head toward the next federal election. The Coalition's proposal to allow home buyers to dip into their superannuation has merit, though misses one key feature.
Why has a succession of inquiries and reports, along with a plethora of academic papers, not led to effective action to improve housing affordability? Because the work has been aimless and unsupported by a national consensus.
The Coalition is continuing to push for superannuation to be used for housing deposits. It's a bad idea on several fronts, including that it would inevitably push up already expensive housing prices.
Our housing system isn't working, with prices and rents growing faster than wages, longer public housing waiting lists and more people are experiencing homelessness. Here are five ways to ease the crisis.
Sydney continues to have the most expensive median dwelling value, but the gap between it and the likes of Brisbane and Perth has narrowed. Melbourne's housing values are now the sixth lowest across the eight capital cities.
Absent much higher interest rates and or unemployment, a house price crash in Australia looks unlikely. However, a failure to boost affordability risks a further slide in home ownership and rising inequality.
Why do house prices move in an up-and-flat pattern rather than up-and-down like shares? When house prices start to fall, supply reduces to create a new equilibrium, rather than needing even more price reductions.
Enough abbreviations and acronyms. IMF, OECD, RBA, APRA, CFR, CBA and ANZ are all calling for curbs on housing lending to head off financial instability and mortgage stress. Why will it take APRA months to issue a paper?
There are many questions surrounding the state of Australian real estate - affordability, foreign ownership, housing stock, population growth, and more. Perhaps an inquiry into housing is long overdue.
There has been a massive increase in apartment commencement, with 137,000 now under construction. There is doubt whether all buyers will proceed to settlement if prices fall due to oversupply.
It’s with heavy hearts that we announce Firstlinks’ co-founder and former Managing Editor, Graham Hand, has died aged 66. Graham was a legendary figure in the finance industry and here are three tributes to him.
Last year, I wrote an article suggesting returns from ASX stocks would trample those from housing over the next decade. One year later, this is an update on how that forecast is going and what's changed since.
Australia is in the early throes of an intergenerational wealth transfer worth an estimated $3.5 trillion. Here's a case study highlighting some of the challenges with transferring wealth between generations.
The Future Fund's original purpose was to meet the unfunded liabilities of Commonwealth defined benefit schemes. These liabilities have ballooned to an estimated $290 billion and taxpayers continue to be treated like fools.
ASFA provides a key guide for how much you will need to live on in retirement. Unfortunately it has many deficiencies, and the averages don't tell the full story of the growing gender superannuation gap.
The Big Four banks have had an extraordinary run and it’s left income investors with a conundrum: to stick with them even though they now offer relatively low dividend yields and limited growth prospects or to look elsewhere.