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Is Australian property at an inflection point?
http://www.ig.com/au/australian-property-at-an-inflection-point?CHID=3
It’s a key moment for Australia as an inflection point in the property market becomes increasingly apparent.
- by Angus Nicholson
Malcolm Turnbull has assumed the Prime Ministership and announced a major overhaul of cabinet ministers, but signs are starting to emerge that the housing market may have reached its top.
National auction clearance rates are set to see their lowest month in three years, and most significantly auction clearance rates in the red-hot Sydney and Melbourne property markets are steadily easing as well. The auction clearance rate could well drop below 70% in October.
This is the steady effect of new macroprudential regulations. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has increased the amount of capital the banks are required to hold against residential mortgage exposures, and capped the annual growth allowed in investor loans at 10%.
Investor loan growth has already begun to slow, and these policies are clearly beginning to have an effect. But the other major development in the past couple of weeks has been the renewed clampdown on capital flight by the Chinese government.
China’s stock market crash and unexpected currency devaluation prompted a significant increase in capital flight. In response, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) imposed a 20% reserve requirement on Chinese financial institutions’ currency forward sales on 8 September, and exhorted them to closely investigate their currency businesses.
Previously, it was quite common for Chinese to bypass the US$50,000 annual currency exchange restriction by pooling together a number of family members’ limits in order to get a large sum of money out of the country. This popular method has also been sternly cracked down on as well.
It does seem fairly significant that these regulations corresponded with a slowdown in Australian property clearance rates. Foreign investors are known to account for 40% of off-plan purchases for major apartment developments.
In any case, a slowdown in the Australian property market has been a long time coming. Property has been one of the major forces supporting the economy as mining investment steadily dried up alongside the collapse in the global commodities market. However, rising property prices have not been accompanied by similar increases in income growth. Surging population growth in Australia, averaging 1.8% per year between 2007 and 2013, also supported strength in the housing market. However, net migration has noticeably begun to slow down over the past year.
With this avenue for growth steadily slowing, the risks of a recession in Australia in 2016 have picked up dramatically. We are unlikely to see a US-style housing crash, but certainly a slowdown is in store. While Malcolm Turnbull may have wrested the Prime Ministership away from Tony Abbott, he could have done so during the most difficult period for the Australian economy since 1991 – dubbed then by Paul Keating as “the recession we had to have.”
If property data continues to provide further evidence of a property slowdown, then the likelihood of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cutting interest rates down to 1.75% or even 1.5% within the next twelve months increases dramatically. Currently, the bond market probability for an RBA rate cut by December sits at 37%, dropping from 42% prior to Glenn Stevens’s speech on Friday 18 September.
The threats to the Australian economy over the next couple of months are likely to increasingly weigh on the minds of investors. The Big Four banking stocks – the darlings of self-managed super fund proprietors – are significantly exposed to the risk of a downturn in the Australian economy and particularly the property sector. These stocks have been closely hugged by many investors because of their excellent performance over the past couple of years and their continuing high yields, but the outlook for their stock prices is likely to cancel out any potential yield benefits in the event of a property downturn.
If the banks do start to see further declines as new capital requirements and a slowing property market start to weigh on their stock prices, this would severely impact the performance of the overall index. The outlook for the materials and energy sectors over the next few months looks no better – global growth continues to slow and excess supply is yet to leave the markets.
With the outlook for financials, materials and the energy sector all fairly negative over the next few months, we’re unlikely to see the ASX returning to its April/May highs just below the 6000 mark, and indeed a protracted break below 5000 could be in the offing.
Global investor sentiment was dinted by the Fed leaving rates on hold as global market volatility and lingering weakness in the US economy convinced them to stay their hand. December is now the most likely date for the fed to raise rates this year, but many believe they could be forced to wait until 2016 in the wake of last week’s decision, adding to the general sense of pessimism about the global economy.
The main bright spot for the ASX at the moment is the prospect of further mergers and acquisitions. But a general sense of pessimism is likely to continue until some decent data on the Chinese economy starts to filter through.
The China Beige Book report just came out, stating that negativity around the Chinese economy has been overdone and is divorced from the facts. The Chinese services sector, which accounts for over half the economy, continues to show improvement in sales, pricing, volumes and capital expenditure based on their survey data. This is further supported by strong retail sales numbers and improving house price data.
With temporary disruptions to China’s output data dissipating over the coming months and stepped-up demands for further fiscal spending, there is some potential salve for global markets due in the coming months as China steps investment in an attempt to achieve its 7% growth target. And hopefully some positive news could help stem some of the growing concerns over the Australian economy.
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复活节游CAIRNS (2005-3-30) 东食西宿 
随便听听吧 (2016-7-14) kevin妈妈 
发表于 2015-9-30 16:55
