2016-06-12

Chinese Media: Australia's Unpredendented Housing Crisis

The Chinese article below discusses a lot of info covered by the AFR: Upping the ante: Queensland adds taxes for foreign buyers in slowing market
Queensland property developers, in shock from the state government's policy announcement on Thursday to impose a 3 per cent surcharge on home purchases by foreigners, can take some comfort by looking south.

The extra $10,962 foreigner buyers will pay on top of the existing $11,214 in transfer duty for a $365,000 house or apartment comes at a time when fears of oversupply-induced price falls are growing, but the lessons of Victoria, which made the same move last year, will help.

In the southern state, where foreign buyers will from next month pay a 7 per cent surcharge on residential property purchases

...In Queensland, however, warnings are growing of an apartment hangover that may be worse than Melbourne's. The pipeline is still growing – in the year to April, Queensland planning authorities approved a record 27,013 new apartments, townhouses and semi-detached homes. In Victoria, new apartment approvals peaked at just under 37,000 in the year to October and by April had slowed to 32,500, ABS figures show.
The Chinese article notes a drop in the clearance rate:
However, from the beginning of the end of May this year, the Australian property market marked decline in the rate of clearance, down to 72.8% at the end of May, compared with 80.3% before, a drop of 7.5 percetage points. Statistics show that a total of 599 sets of houses Sydney listed for sale at the end of May, down 858 units.

...Also reflected in the price. A quarter of the average house prices in Australia fell 0.5%, apartment prices fell almost across the board, there are institutions predict that by 2016 Australia apartment prices will fall by 1%. According to Sino FINANCE online research, since the beginning of this year, in the heart of Sydney's inner city has six residential housing prices fell markedly, especially CBD apartments fell as much as 12%.

Look at Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Australia, the three Chinese people love the city. According to local agency data show that within the next year, there will be three apartments listed 80,000, which is equivalent to the last year's total sales houses.

"Australian Financial Review" last month, said the next two years, the surrounding suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney may occur more than 210,000 units of new apartments.

Director of real estate research firm Robert Charter Keck Cramer's Papaleo said that by 2017, Melbourne will have 20,000 apartments completed. Among these, 6,000 apartments located in downtown Melbourne.
iFeng: 澳洲楼市遭遇空前危机!当地媒体呼唤中国接盘侠

Land prices are rising as well, due to the demand from immigration.
It is the federal government that has chosen to open the immigration spigots, leading to strong inflows of new residents into Australia’s cities (Sydney and Melbourne, in particular). And given the massive vertical fiscal imbalances present in the federal system, it is no surprise that the states have attempted to prevent growth of the urban footprint in a bid to save on infrastructure costs. They simply cannot afford to fund this growth without federal help.

This is where the federal government should be playing a leading role in housing policy to assist in boosting supply for the expanding population, rather than ignoring the issue altogether.

For example, the federal government could offer incentive payments to the states to free-up land supply, relax planning, and build housing-related infrastructure. Again, it is the federal government that has decided to run a high immigration program, so the least it should do is provide the states – the ones primarily responsible for service delivery and infrastructure – with the means to cope with this growth.
Macro Business: Where is Australia’s national housing policy?

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