Monday, May 19, 2014

Australia's neighbors are taking measures to cool their housing markets, but not Australia.

Australia’s Central Bank Not Interested in Targeted Steps to Cool Housing
But capital city home prices are up about 11% in the past year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, largely driven by property investors. The sharp run-up has prompted the central bank to remind the public that property prices can also decline.

Ms. Ellis said house prices were expected to rise after the RBA cut interest rates repeatedly in recent years, reaching an all-time low of 2.5% last year. That response is “a natural part of the ‘transmission mechanism” of monetary policy, she said.

Ms. Ellis acknowledged that the rise in prices has been hard on new-home buyers. The percentage of new-home buyers in the market has fallen dramatically in the past year.
You know who it is really unfair to? Cash buyers. There is no "real" market for housing, as far as the central bank is concerned. No one who has saved up their money to pay all cash should be crazy enough to compete with a negatively geared investor working with leverage.

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