Limited Chance of Negative Equity
By Graeme Salt For most people who buy a home, a mortgage represents the single largest debt they will take on in their lives. But what happens if the market value of a property you’ve bought falls below the amount you still owe on your home loan? This situation is called “negative equity”. In Australia, […]
What to expect this Spring selling season
There are divided opinions about this year’s property market
A crash won’t happen and it won’t make new housing cheap
By Graeme Salt House prices have fallen for five straight months and right now the mood is starkly divided. Is now a good time to buy? Should you be worried? Housing can keep you awake at night for any number of reasons, but there is a floor that is likely to determine how low prices […]
Is your offset really saving you money?
Offset Accounts
Your next mortgage may not be with a bank.
By Graeme Salt You want to buy a house; your first call is often to your bank. But increasingly, many non-bank lenders are finding solutions to would-be home buyers when the bank says no. Sometimes, highly-regulated banks just won’t lend you enough for the expensive Australian property markets. This image shows the borrowing capacity of […]
Property in 2026
By Graeme Salt Home prices will finish 2026 largely flat across the combined capitals, as higher interest rates and strained affordability see soft to falling prices through the back half of 2026, before a turning point and return to growth late in the year and into 2027. But the result is not a uniform slowdown. […]
Can’t save a 20pc deposit? Four ways to buy property sooner
By Graeme Salt Amassing a down payment remains a huge hurdle for aspiring buyers, despite easing house prices. A house deposit generally needs to be 20 per cent of the value of the property if buyers want to avoid paying what’s called lenders mortgage insurance (LMI). LMI protects lenders from losing money if a borrower defaults and […]
8 out of 10 Australians Can’t Be Wrong
By Graeme Salt More than eight out 10 Australians now use mortgage brokers to arrange their home loans new figures have revealed. But why would you use a mortgage broker? According to research house, Cotality, 81.0 per cent of new home loans are arranged by mortgage brokers – an increase of 4.2 per cent since […]
Rents vs wages – how do they compare by city?
By Graeme Salt Extract taken from realestate.com.au/insights In all of Australia’s capital cities, rents have outgrown wages. Perth has had the largest increase in rents relative to wages, with rents increasing by 80 percentage points more than wages. That increase has placed significant pressure on household budgets, as wages have not kept pace. The proportion […]
When it comes to property, we need a Bex and a lie down.
This week saw a number of separate pieces of research which showed the future for the housing market. There has been much hand-wringing on the state of the property market – with Cotality’s national Home Value Index (HVI) dropping 0.4 per cent marking the largest month-on-month fall since December 2022. But we all need to […]