How far house prices have jumped above fair value
Sydney houses are 41 per cent above fair value, the highest in the nation, although units are more reasonably priced, at 3 per cent above.
Brisbane is the second-most overvalued city for a house, at 38 per cent. The future Olympic city ranks third nationally for unit overvaluation (19 per cent).
Hobart offers the worst value in the country for units (27 per cent).
Rental growth in Melbourne has been strong next to slowing house prices, resulting in a 15 per cent overvaluation. Only Perth is more equitable, at 10 per cent.
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'Melbourne is complicated for investors,' Oliver says. 'It's got high debt levels and then the government announced those property taxes, which encouraged investors to go elsewhere.'
Oliver thinks two-thirds of Australians who own their property outright or have a mortgage would probably prefer prices to rise.
'From the point of view of social harmony, it is better to get property prices to a point of greater affordability. That doesn't mean you have to crash them,' Oliver says.
'That would probably cause a recession. The better outcome is where we go through a decade or so of house prices putting in very modest gains, or no gains at all, at least falling relative to people's wages.'
Independent economic futurist Evan Lucas says many factors go into a real-life, fair value assessment.
'Fair value is also location, land size, condition, the age of home, prices of comparable properties, market conditions, interest rates and employment opportunities, and then the one more existential, emotional value,' he says.
He says 55 per cent of Australians' wealth is in their home.
'The average growth of Australian housing is about 7 per cent per annum,' Lucas says. 'And then if you applied compounding to that over 30 years, you can explain why we got here today.
'If, as the data suggests, to get back to fair value Sydney would have to fall by 30 to 41 per cent, the impact that would have economically would be catastrophic.
'And I don't use that word lightly, because if your property value fell by a third, your household economics would completely upend themselves. You would stop spending and you would find yourself in mortgage jail.'
Lucas says it is possible for young Australians to buy a home, but it will not resemble the property of their childhood.
Also, the subjectivity of value changes over time, buyers' agent Steve Palise, founder of Palise Property, says.
'I advise clients how much they should spend based on their risk profile,' he says.
'How stable is their job, how much buffer they have for varying interest rates, and how much cash reserve they have for unexpected events.'
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