With data showing national house prices have been falling for the last 7 months, SQM Research has told Fairfax Newspapers today, it expects June 2012 house prices in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth to be as much as 15 percent lower than 2010 peaks, provided there are no sudden problems in China from their housing and debt bubbles or a second credit crunch originating from the Eurozone. Such events would likely put even greater downwards pressure on house prices.
Brisbane and Perth has so far lead the housing price pack down, falling 6.6 percent and 6.3 percent respectively over the past 12 months according to RP Data-Rismark Hedonic Home Index. But with an oversupply of properties in Melbourne and a surge in prices last year, Melbourne is quickly catching up falling 1.4 alone percent in the month of July.
Read more here :
ยป Report: House prices to slide further in 2012 – The Sydney Morning Herald, 7th September 2011.
Qld unemployment increased by 8.8% to 6.2% in one month !!!!! Hello 15% fall in house prices in the next year should be on the money. But if XMAS is bad for retail, less jobs will be created and more people will be looking.
People are mad to commit to large mortgage debt now. As Steve Keen put it a couple of years ago – GET OUT OF DEBT !!!!!
On a happier note – the currency dropped today which makes the Australian gold mining shares even more profitable. Happy days for those prepared.
The best news in years!
This is good news, but keep in mind unemployment is only 5.3% so there is still a long way to go before things get worse. Steve Keen has preducted 40% falls over the next 10 years.
If China puts on the brakes and bank credit drys up then this may occur much sooner.
There may be some hope for future generations!
5.3% is far from the real figure. People who work part-time which cannot sustain them should not be counted as employed.
If you work 1 hour a week you are counted as being ‘Employed’.
@ Domenic
I think a better measure of employment is total hours worked. If you assume that annual and sick leave are fairly constant and that this has been flat or dropping and yet population is going up it isn’t a good sign.
This stat also accounts for people moving from full to part-time work (this has been happen in droves from 2008) which are not reflected in % unemployment because of the 1 hour (to quality as employed) rule.
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/6202.0Main%20Features3May%202011?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=6202.0&issue=May%202011&num=&view=
It is very probable that the Australian headline unemployment figures are no more credible than the US headline figures. And, this is before we touch on the thorny little subject of “underemployment”.
One of the key mantras oft repeated by those correspondents to the housing bull sites is that “people can always get themselves a second job” – however with a contracting Manufacturing and Retail Industry, the “local” part time jobs market is also contracting. It is also of interest that public opinion is maybe changing to a far more bearish perspective – I was listening to a radio programme last week, and one of the contributors mentioned “in five years’ time Australia will be where Ireland is now”, which is hardly a confident outlook.
Might be worth keeping an eye on the occupancy rates for the major International Airport long and short-stay carparks – I remember they blossomed once the Eire crash occurred as overseas Nationals decided the time had come to cut and run. There’s no logical reason why the same will not happen here once the economy becomes less attractive to those who can market their skills elsewhere for greater net return.
@Free Willy very intersting link, especially the text above the last graph “… before falling to 1,532 million hours in June 2009.” I will not go into (once again) what my friends, one from MissionAustralia and the other from CentreLink have been telling me in detail.
June 2009 is when both told me their respective offices packed out with a flood of people seeking to enrol or apply for CentreLink benefits for some kind of CentreLink assistance. The number of people applying for a benefit through offices like MissionAustralia has been on the increase since June 2009.
The thorny subject of under-employment. There are 3 catagories to this:
1) The very tiny (microscopic) number of people that own their home outright, own their investment unit, own their two cars, no credit card nor personal finance debt, and kids are not so expensive anymore. Their job once paid them over $100K pa., then retrenched, then managed to find work in their industry again, only this time their earning $42K pa. I know one such person like this, they count themselves very lucky. Despite realising they are now working 5 days and paid for 2.
2) Under-employed with their nose above water and occassionally can open their mouths for a gasp of air. People not being paid as much as they were, working longer hours, and receive no benefit (for whatever reason). These people have no money soon after payday.
3) Under-employed that require assistance. This catagory is larger than we know, cause we’re not told as it is not spoken about. Must be a “…thorny little subject…” alright Phil S. I can only speak through the (how shall I express this…,) observational opinion of my MissionAustralia and CentreLink aquaintance, if you include this category as unemployed (in their opinion you should), they reckon we could be looking at an unemployment rate that flucuates between 14-17%. These people don’t receive benefits (not all, some do) every fornight. They may get 3 weeks of work that pay them $1500 pw, then nothing for who knows when the next job comes, that may them them $650 pw this time for 1 1/2 weeks.
@AverageBloke the 1 hour per week counted as employed also has its’ voodoo arithmetic applied. I know you know its’ not people that actually have 1 hour per week of work. One may have 6 weeks of work up their sleeve before entering a CentreLink office, then the weighting, hour distribution, average seek times for work before finding employment, other factors are thrown into the model, then rabbit out of the hat, puff of smoke and guess what? You’re not unemployed!
May we all say God save the people, cause nothing is going to save Australia.
– BotRot on Gough Whitlem revised. Sorry just had to chuck that in.