One thing that always gets me riled up is when people bitch to me about the housing prices in Australia. I’ve said in the past that yes, for an average single income earner, the median is unaffordable but I’ve long been of the stance that that situation is far from typical. What I feel is that Australians looking at the property market today are suffering more from a crisis of desire more than anything else, wanting to stay in the same level of housing that their parents had without the decades of living in the mortgage belt that preceded it. For the whiners out there however there might be a saving grace that’ll let them get into the house that they want, so long as they can keep their jobs through it.

So the reserve bank decided to drop rates by 25 basis points on Tuesday, confusing a lot of people as inflation was hovering around the Reserve Banks target rate of around 3%. It was the first time that the rates had dropped since April 2009 back when the fallout from the GFC was still causing problems. The decision seemed t0 be based around the fact that despite good economic figures Australian families were still struggling with mortgage payments and as such a drop in rates was seen as being more beneficial than keeping them on hold again. Taking a step back however I believe that they’re attempting to soften the blow of a potential upcoming crisis.

I am, of course, talking about Greece and the potential for a repeat of the events we saw with the GFC.

Rewind back a month or so and everything was starting to look better for Europe with Germany approving the rescue package albeit with some rather harsh provisions in order to make sure Greece didn’t do the same thing again. However just recently Greece has decided to put the rescue package measures to a referendum putting the future of the financial situation in Europe in the hands of the Greek people. Since there’s been rather hot and heavy opposition to the austerity measures that they’ve tried to implement in the past it’s understandable why everyone in the Eurozone is concerned about what might happen. Indeed with the way the markets reacted it’s seems like everyone thinks it’ll fall flat on its face.

But how, pray tell, does this affect property prices in Australia?

Well for the past year or so prices for Australian property have been declining slowly, on the order of single figure percentage points. Primarily this is because of many people coming out of the honeymoon period they had when they secured a massive mortgage during the GFC at spectacularly low rates, many below 5%. Once the pressure was back on with more sane interest rates many chose to sell up and this has lead to a downward pressure on the Australian housing market. It’s still not enough on its own to make property affordable though, for that we also need cheaper mortgages.

Markets are fun little beasts and are, for the most part, driven by irrational thought processes and fear. You’ll notice that during the GFC Australia remained relatively unscathed yet we still had as much panic as if we were going to go down with the rest of them. Indeed there was supposed to be a tightening of credit during this as well but many banks aggressively dropped their rates in order to draw people in. The fallout from the Greece’s financial problems is a very similar trigger to that of the GFC, enough so that if those measures don’t pass you can almost guarantee that interest rates will fall through the floor again as everyone tries to withdraw from the markets and the desire for credit dries up. Of course this will also mean that companies will use this as an excuse (both legitimately and illegitimately) to start downsizing again, pushing the unemployment rate back up.

For a financial sociopath like myself it’s like being a kind in a candy store as I’ll have my pick of the loans and properties available. However it’s not a situation that everyone can take advantage of, indeed only a select few (although not just the 1%) will be able to. However if you’ve got a decent deposit up and have been waiting for “just the right time” to get into the market then holding off for another couple months or so whilst this disaster unfolds could prove beneficial for you, especially if you take the banks current fixed term mortgage rates as any indication of where the market is heading.

About the Author

David Klemke

David is an avid gamer and technology enthusiast in Australia. He got his first taste for both of those passions when his father, a radio engineer from the University of Melbourne, gave him an old DOS box to play games on.

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