National market may still be on the skids, but it's all roses and sunshine in the Premier State
That's the word from Moody's Analytics, which has declared the national property market will report a 5.4 per cent recovery in 2020.
Just as prices in Sydney and Melbourne dragged the country down, so to is it leading the recovery - even though the national market will still finish 7 points down by the end of 2019.
Moody's reckons Sydney prices will increase 7.7 per cent in 2020 and another 7.6 per cent in 2021 - with similar growth tipped for Melbourne as well. In Sydney's north-west, the analysts are expecting a huge 11.1 per cent jump next year and another 11.9 per cent increase in 2021. This will be music to the ears of land developers in Sydney's greenfield belt.
In light of this, one has to wonder how serious the NSW government is about its proposal to replace stamp duty with land tax.
Federal Liberal Senator Dean Smith has found himself in the naughty corner after suggesting yesterday that such a move could be funded by a hike or expansion of the GST. PM Scott Morrison moved quickly to squash the idea, leading a phalanx of pollies publicly lambasting the WA Senator's too-clever-by-halfness.
Senator Smith may be finding himself shunned in the Canberra corridors this week, but it doesn't change the fact that the money will need to come from somewhere. It certainly won't be coming from an increase in consumer spending; mortgage data presented by CBA to the House of Reps economics committee yesterday provided more proof that people are choosing to pay down debt than say, go nuts at Westfield.
In any case, Australians certainly aren't making rain by leaving their money in the bank. The HoR economics committee also heard that term deposit saving rates are being slashed faster than the hapless cast of a Wes Craven film.
ABC business editor Ian "doom-and-gloom" Verrender is continuing his happy habit of focusing on the downside, in his latest piece telling us why we're all f***ed, and explaining why no-one is spending at the moment. Ian's point is that this is happening worldwide, not just here - and that it's going to take more than RBA governor Philip Lowe telling us that everything's going to be okay.
The sentiment around saving rates - and to that end, mortgages - is increasingly becoming "shop around." Today's news that the margin between rates charged to loyal customers compared to new customers has doubled since the RBA started cutting, won't do much to soften that particular blow on the big four. Online lending platform Lendi reckons the value of bank "loyalty tax" has blown out to about $6 billion in the past five months.
If this is correct, while Australians seem to be keeping their heads down and paying their way, they're being stung mercilessly as a result of their own passiveness. We may be doing our own Jerry Maguire (pictured) thing and calling on employers and government to show us the money, but the majority of us are idly paying above the odds for mortgages and settling for less on money saved.
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