Housing Affordability Slightly Improves
Despite mortgage serviceability ratios at decade highs in some capital cities.
Despite mortgage serviceability ratios at decade highs in some capital cities.
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”
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After more than a year, prices have finally levelled out in prime central London, while outer London saw a small uptick in high-end prices from the previous quarter
The first quarter of the year brought some long-awaited signs of recovery in London’s luxury housing market, offering the first positive quarterly price growth since September 2022, according to a report from Savills on Wednesday.
After six consecutive quarterly price falls, luxury home prices in central London levelled out in the first three months of the year, with a 0.1% quarterly uptick in prices. The £3 million to £5 million (US$3.79 million to US$6.32 million) market saw a slightly larger increase of 0.3%.
Outer London’s luxury market saw greater quarterly price growth, with home prices up 0.8%, as some stability returned to mortgage costs and lured more buyers back to the market, according to the report.
All of this is evidence that the market is “in early stages of recovery,” according to Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills.
“The outlook for the housing market has certainly improved, partly because the mortgage market has recovered more quickly than expected,” Cook said in the report. “With the first rate cut rapidly coming into view and recessionary risks easing, greater stability has returned to the cost of mortgage debt, which has positively impacted domestic prime markets, where many buyers rely on borrowing, most notably in leafy outer prime South and West London, as well as the commuter belt.”
Outside of London, prices across the U.K. saw no quarterly growth heading into the beginning of the spring market, which is expected to bring higher levels of buyer activity in many regions.
Suburban regions saw prices dip just 0.1%, while urban areas—like Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, and Bath and Oxford in England—saw prices increase by 0.6%.
Cook said regional buyers are more likely to be concerned about market uncertainty than London buyers in the lead up to the general election.
“As a result, buyers are still expected to be less committed until the dust has settled,” he said.
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