Housing Affordability Slightly Improves

With the recent decrease in house prices has come the first measurable signs of an improvement in affordability across the property market.

Yet despite the downturn, the pressure on interest rates has kept mortgages — proportionate to incomes — at the highest level they have been since June 2011 according to the latest ANZ/CoreLogic Housing Affordability Report.

The new research found that with property values decreasing, the time it takes to save for a home deposit has also dropped across the combined capital cities by 11 days to 11.11 years in the three months to June 2022.

In Sydney, the time needed to save a deposit was at 17.1 years while Melbourne came in at 13.6 years.

Further, the ratio of dwelling values to household income has also dropped slightly across the combined capitals, down by 0.1 point to 9.3 over the June quarter.

Despite this, the proportion of annual household income required to service a new mortgage nationally is up to 44% from 40.4% the previous quarter.

In Sydney and Melbourne, where property values declined 2.8% and 1.8% respectively, mortgage serviceability is higher with the share of income needed to service a home loan in Sydney up 3.3% to 66.1% and 2.3% to 52.7% in Melbourne.

“There’s a bit of a perception that if house prices fall, then mortgage affordability will improve but actually, on our interest rate forecasts, prices would have to fall another more than 25 per cent for mortgage serviceability to improve, and we don’t think that prices will fall that far, certainly not a national level,” said ANZ senior economist, Felicity Emmett.

“So with higher interest rates, we are seeing a big increase in how much people have to pay to service their mortgage and that means on that measure, affordability will deteriorate”