Home Loan Unaffordability

One of my least favourite lobby groups is the Housing Industry Association (HIA). For some reason, I find their pronouncements to be almost always self-serving, and speak of the housing industry as if it were the engine room of the Australian economy and woe betide anyone who says otherwise.

Today the HIA announced that the housing affordability "crisis" is now over. Since the housing industry has been suffering from a deflating bubble in the last 2 years, you'd think it was time we filled the streets and partied.

But the stats are more depressing. According to figures supplied by the Real Estate Institute of Australia and AMP Banking and featured at the MESI wesbite - the Home Loan Affordability Indicator - housing has been exceptionally unaffordable in Australia since June 2004. The recent figures that the HIA are touting are not wrong - but they need to be seen in context. Yes, housing has become more affordable, but it is still exceptionally expensive.

© 2006 Neil McKenzie Cameron, http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/




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