Fewer properties but consistent clearance rates point to a busy weekend
There’s plenty of activity for motivated buyers on the Australian east coast
There’s plenty of activity for motivated buyers on the Australian east coast
The number of auctions scheduled across Australia has fallen week-on-week, new figures show.
Data from CoreLogic shows that the number of properties across the combined capitals is down -7.7 percent for the first weekend in August, with a total of 1,821 expected to go under the hammer. However, figures are still a significant improvement on last year, up 23.8 percent on the same week in 2022 when 1,471 auctions took place and the clearance rate was just 56.6 percent.
Melbourne has experienced the biggest fall, with a -9.0 percent decrease on last week. However, the eastern capital will still see the most properties go to market, with 792 homes scheduled compared with 748 homes in Sydney. The difference is that Sydney figures have remained steady, with just one less home up for sale this week compared with the previous week. Auction figures in both cities are considerably higher than this time last year with data showing an increase of more than 25 percent.
In the smaller capitals, it’s a mixed bag. Brisbane is experiencing its quietest week since Easter with 86 homes scheduled, a significant drop from the previous week when 173 homes went to auction while Adelaide has 105 homes set to go to market (nine less than last week). However, the nation’s capital is set for a busy weekend, with 81 homes scheduled in Canberra – the highest number of homes in nine weeks.
Figures in Perth are typically lower, with just seven auctions scheduled. It’s a similar story in tightly held Tasmania, with just two properties going to market this weekend.
Clearance rates from last week continue to show a steady winter auction market, the 64.9 percent of properties put to market resulting in a sale. This time last year, the clearance rate was just 54 percent.
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The Republican nominee says it would help bring down home prices, though these buyers account for a fraction of U.S. home sales
Former President Donald Trump said he would ban undocumented immigrants from obtaining home mortgages, a move he indicated would help ease home prices even though these buyers account for a tiny fraction of U.S. home sales.
Home loans to undocumented people living in the U.S. are legal but they aren’t especially common. Between 5,000 and 6,000 mortgages of this kind were issued last year, according to estimates from researchers at the Urban Institute in Washington.
Overall, lenders issued more than 3.4 million mortgages to all home purchasers in 2023, federal government data show.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, made his comments Thursday during a policy speech to the Economic Club of New York in Manhattan.
Housing remains a top economic issue for voters during this presidential election. Rent and home prices grew at historic rates during the pandemic and mortgage rates climbed to levels not seen in more than two decades. A July Wall Street Journal poll showed that voters rank housing as their second-biggest inflation concern after groceries.
Both major candidates for the 2024 presidential election have made appeals to voters on housing during recent campaign stops, though the issue has so far featured more prominently in Vice President Kamala Harris ’s campaign.
Trump has blamed immigrants for many of the nation’s woes, including crime and unemployment. Now, he is pointing to immigrants as a cause of the nation’s housing-affordability crisis. Yet some affordable-housing advocates and real-estate professionals said Trump’s mortgage proposal would fail to bring relief to priced-out home buyers.
“It’s unfortunate that given the significant housing affordability crisis that is widely acknowledged across most partisan lines, we are arguing about a minuscule segment of the market,” said David Dworkin, president of the National Housing Conference, an affordable-housing advocacy group.
Gary Acosta, chief executive of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, a trade organization, said, “It’s just another effort to vilify immigrants and to continue to scapegoat them for any issues that we have here in the United States.”
A Trump campaign spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Undocumented immigrants in the U.S. can obtain an obscure type of mortgage designed for taxpayers without Social Security numbers, most of whom are Hispanic. The passage of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 allowed banks to use identification numbers from the Internal Revenue Service as an alternative to Social Security, extending a number of financial services to people without legal status for the first time.
Mortgage loans for undocumented immigrants are typically higher interest and borrowers include legal residents who have undocumented spouses, Acosta said. Lenders include regional credit unions and community-development financial institutions.
In his speech, Trump said that “the flood” of undocumented immigrants is driving up housing costs. “That’s why my plan will ban mortgages for illegal aliens,” he said.
Trump didn’t elaborate on how he would enact a ban on such loans.
Though mortgages for undocumented people living in the U.S. are relatively rare, residential real-estate purchases by foreign nationals are big business , especially in expensive coastal cities such as New York and Los Angeles. These sales have declined in recent years, however.
Close to half of foreign purchases are made by people residing abroad, while the other half are made by recent immigrants or residents on nonimmigrant visas, according to an annual survey by the National Association of Realtors. Many affluent foreigners buy U.S. homes with cash instead of obtaining mortgage financing.
In his Thursday speech, which focused mostly on other economic matters such as energy and taxation, Trump proposed other measures to bring down housing costs, including cutting regulations for builders and allowing more building on federal land. Similar ideas appeared in the housing policy outline Harris released in August .
The former president has spoken on housing-related issues in speeches at other recent campaign stops, including in Michigan last month, where he touted his administration’s 2020 overturn of a policy that had encouraged cities to reduce racial segregation .
“I keep the suburbs safe,” Trump said. “I stopped low-income towers from rising right alongside of their house. And I’m keeping the illegal aliens away from the suburbs.”
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Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.