The Housing Bubble

A report from the Ballina Advocate in Australia. “Australia is facing a ‘debt crisis’ - and the property market and our entire economy are at risk as a result. That’s according to the sobering 60 Minutes segment Bricks and Slaughter which aired last night, revealing the country’s property downturn was just the tip of the iceberg. According to reporter Tom Steinfort, the current slump is actually ‘more like falling off a cliff,’ with a number of real estate and finance experts claiming houses could plummet in value by up to 40 per cent in the next 12 months.”

“Mr Steinfort spoke with data scientist Martin North from Digital Finance Analytics, who said Australia was uniquely vulnerable when it came to an economic crash tied to a property downturn. ‘At the worst end of the spectrum, if everything turns against us we could see property prices 40-45 per cent down from their peaks, which is a huge deal,’ he said. There’s $1.7 trillion held by the banks in mortgages for owner-occupies and investors. And that’s about 65 per cent of their total lending. That’s higher than any other country in the Western world by a long way. We are uniquely exposed at the moment.’”

“Mr North said Australia was now in the same position as the US was back in 2006 and 2007 - a position which triggered an economic collapse. ‘As a society, and as a government, and as a regulatory system, we’re all banking on the home price engine that just goes on giving and giving and giving. It’s not going to,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a debt bomb, we’ve got a debt crisis and at some point it’s going to explode in our face.’”

“It’s a sentiment shared by Laing and Simmons real estate agent Peter Younan, who said the median house price in his patch in Granville in Sydney’s west had dropped from $1.2 million to $1 million in just one year - a shocking $200,000 plummet. He said foreclosures had also risen by 600 per cent in the region. ‘The mortgage stress is definitely being felt especially in this area,” he said.

“60 Minutes also spoke with several Aussie homeowners who gave harrowing details of the stress they faced trying to pay off their mortgages, including having their power turned off and being ‘hounded’ by their banks. But property investor Bushy Martin said the blame lay squarely at the feet of buyers who ‘mortgaged themselves up to their eyeballs’ in a bid to snap up dream homes before being able to afford them.”

“However, the segment has also sparked backlash online, with some claiming the situation had been exaggerated. One Reddit user branded the report as an example of ‘alarmist journalism and scare tactics,’ while another said it was ‘dramatic and cringe-worthy.’ And some said it was unfair to blame the banks for the situation, and that homeowners needed to take responsibility for their own decisions.”

“That was in response to comments made by one homeowner on the program, who said the bank had ’suddenly switched the mortgage to interest and principal,’ raising his repayments by 57 per cent. ‘The interest only part annoyed me the most. The bank didn’t ’suddenly change’ your repayment from (interest only) to (Principal and interest) your IO term expired. You a) knew this would happen and b) assumed the bank would renew it when it expired. I hope this speculator gets burnt first,’ one Reddit user said.”

“However, others slammed the banks for handing out multiple interest-only loans to buyers. ‘They raked in the cash from dodgy loans for years and are crying wolf now. It’s negligent beyond words,’ one Reddit user said.”

From Domain News. “Experts have questioned claims of a 40 per cent drop in Australia’s house prices, made over the weekend on 60 Minutes. Experts have rubbished the claims made on Sunday night, saying the very worst case scenario was presented. ‘Mortgage stress and falling prices were the primary factors of concern on the program, which claimed the number of foreclosures was rising, and the banks were obfuscating the real numbers.”

“Market Economics managing director Stephen Koukoulas said this was a weak claim. ‘There’s a whole lot of reasons to suggest prices are going to be weaker for a shorter amount of time, but it’s remarkably orderly,’ he said. ‘People aren’t rushing in to hand over their keys.’”

From ABC News. “Stagnant house prices are likely the new normal for property markets in much of Sydney and Melbourne, analysts are warning as prices fall for the 11th month in a row. Keiran Edwards is experiencing the new reality first hand. He is trying to sell the family home in Penrith on Sydney’s western fringe.”

“‘I thought we might sell it in the first week,’ he told 7.30. ‘Someone would come in and go, yeah, that’s mine. It just hasn’t happened.’ He bought the house six years ago and renovated it himself. Until it went on the market, he thought its value had doubled. ‘I just assumed that people would straight away walk in and love it, like I loved it all those years ago when I bought it,’ he said. ‘But even saying that, they maybe do love it but are having trouble getting finance.’”

The Daily Mail Australia. “Home borrowers are being warned to brace for bad news with the proportion of houses and units selling for a loss at the highest level in five years, new figures show. Across Australia, one in 10 homes sold during the June quarter fetched a lower amount than the purchase price, data from Core Logic showed. The proportion of loss-making sales, at 10.2 per cent, was at the highest level since the three months to October 2013, with apartments more likely than houses to burn the seller.”

“In some Australian capital cities, more than half of all units sold were being offloaded at a loss, with six of the seven mainland capitals seeing a double-digit proportion of apartment owners losing money at sale time.”

“In Perth, 23.4 per cent of homes sold at a loss, followed by 20.1 per cent in regional Queensland. Inner-city apartments fared particularly badly, with 53.4 per cent of central business district Perth units selling at a loss during the three months to June 30. Brisbane’s inner-city was also a bad place to invest with 32.4 per cent of units fetching less than the seller had previously paid, compared with 22.3 per cent in Melbourne’s inner-city.”

“In Darwin, a whopping 71.1 per cent of units sold at a loss during the June quarter, a jump from 51.9 per cent during the same period a year earlier. Sydney, however, was the least risky capital city market to buy a unit, with only 3.1 per cent of units in the city and the inner-south selling at a loss, in Australia’s most densely populated locality where 71 per cent of dwellings sold are apartments. ”

“Across Australia, 9.4 per cent of capital city properties sold at a loss compared with 11.6 per cent in regional markets. Investors were more likely to get assaulted financially, too, with 10.1 per cent of them making a loss, compared with 9.8 per cent of owner occupiers, following an Australian Prudential Regulation Authority crackdown on investor loans.”

From ABC News. “You know things are tough in the property market when a seasoned real estate agent sells his own family home and chooses to rent instead. Greg Rossen has been selling homes in Perth’s wealthy western suburbs for decades, but even he doesn’t have the confidence to invest in housing at the moment. And he can’t see it getting better anytime soon.”

“‘No-one can predict the future, but for my own self I have sold out of the market and I am renting a family property because I don’t see any light on the horizon,’ he said. ‘Investors need to be mindful of where they think the cycle is and make up their own mind. But there is a body of thought, that I subscribe to, that conditions are not good and I believe they could well get worse.’”

“After strong price rises across 12 suburbs — largely at the premium end of Perth’s property market — the Real Estate Institute of WA recently claimed ‘aspirational suburbs are really leading the way in the property market’s recovery.’ ‘It’s lovely to quote certain suburbs where you have what appears to be an increase in price, but in reality, if we look at the total metropolitan market, those are almost anecdotal,’ he said. ‘We are coming off a low base so statistics can lie and they need to be very closely looked at.’”

“Mr Rossen said those price rises were attributable to ‘pent-up’ demand but the broader market ‘is generally in a bad condition.’ He noted that while prices in Nedlands have risen 15 per cent over the past year, he recently re-sold three properties in the area for 10 per cent less than he sold the same houses for a decade ago. He said a ‘devastation’ in commercial rents as well as tenant vacancies in both the residential and retail sector continued to point to poor market conditions.”

“LJ Hooker Rockingham Baldivis director Paul Baird-Murray said the area south of Perth in which he worked was currently saturated with properties for sale, the majority of which were bought as investments, ‘Some of them have actually said ‘but I thought rents just kept going up, I thought property prices would just continue,’ Mr Baird-Murray said. Many investors were now panicking because they were under financial strain or feared further market falls. But Mr Baird-Murray said they were unrealistic about the value of their property in the crowded market.”

“Local resident Steph Moses said ongoing land development in the area was exacerbating the problem. She and husband Daniel have an investment property in Port Kennedy, between Perth and the regional city of Mandurah. They had intended to keep the property for the long term, but were recently forced to list it for sale. ‘I was given the diagnosis that I had stage four cancer so we had to change a lot of things,’ Mrs Moses said. ‘I have had to stop work because of my illness.’”

“The only offer they have had on the property was $70,000 less than they paid for it. ‘If you want to build a house, you get $10,000-$15,000 for building a new home, so there is no incentive for the first-home buyers market to buy an established property,’ Mrs Moses said.”