It’s 2002, the Sydney Olympics is over, Australia is getting used to the iPod, and the median house price in Sydney is $365,000.
Fast forward two decades and how the world has changed. The Tokyo Olympics is on indefinite hold, we’re on the twelfth iPhone, and the median established house price in Sydney stands at $1,000,000.
Investing in the property markets sounds obvious at those multiples. First-time home buyers certainly think so. Capital city property prices rose a record breaking 2.8 per cent in the March quarter, according to Corelogic, chased up by owner-occupiers swarming into the market.
But were this 2002, they might be better off choosing equities.
MacroBusiness
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at 10:00 am on May 5, 2021 | 7 comments
Yesterday’s mortgage data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) suggests that HomeBuilder and associated stimulus is starting to fade.
According to the Housing Industry Association (HIA), first home buyer (FHB) activity in the construction market hit
“its highest level since the stimulus associated with the GFC”. These FHBs
“were significant beneficiaries of the [HomeBuilder] program” and have also taken
“advantage of other stimulus measures such as the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme and state government incentives”. However, the
“data for March suggests that the surge due to HomeBuilder is starting to ease from record levels”.
5 May 2021
The Morrison government will establish a new Australian Climate Service to coordinate and oversee preparation and responses to climate change, bringing together the work of key government agencies.
The Australian Climate Service will receive $209 million in funding in the federal budget to be delivered next week.
The new service will bring together expertise across a range of Commonwealth agencies, including the Bureau of Meteorology, Geoscience Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and the CSIRO.
The role of the Australian Climate Service will be to guide responses to emergencies triggered by extreme weather events, such as floods, storms and bush fires and will work in cooperation with Emergency Management Australia and the Government’s new National Recovery and Resilience Agency.
Australian reports show deepening social toll as pandemic continues
In the lead up to the May 11 Australian federal budget, reports produced by welfare agencies and charities have pointed to intensifying poverty and social pain as the COVID-19 pandemic continues around the globe.
Far from being exempt from the terrible impact of the failure of governments worldwide to contain the mutating coronavirus, Australia is experiencing a worsening social crisis as the ruling class exploits the pandemic to slash welfare, wages and working conditions.
Workers queuing outside an inner-western Sydney Centrelink office early last year [Credit: WSWS]
At the end of March, the Liberal-National government terminated its meagre JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme, on which some 1.2 million workers still depended for survival, and returned JobSeeker dole and welfare payments to sub-poverty levels of about $44 a day.
New loan commitments reach record high
By Cameron Micallef
04 May 2021
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1 minute read
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Record-low interest rates are leading to record-high new loan commitments as investors and first home buyers flood the market, official figures have revealed.
The latest new loan commitment data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed that new loan commitments rose by 5.5 per cent in March 2021, hitting a record high of $30.2 billion.
Lending to investors accounted for more than half of the March rise in housing loan commitments.
The value of new loan commitments for investor housing rose 12.7 per cent to $7.8 billion in March 2021 (seasonally adjusted), 54.3 per cent higher than in March 2020.