Is now the time to put your home on the market?

August/September continues to be one of the busiest periods in real estate, with realestateview.com.au seeing the greatest proportion of its yearly listings during the spring market. In an effort to time a sale perfectly, many vendors begin conversations with their agents well before this peak period of the market, making late August one of the busiest times of the year.

While there are strong arguments for selling your home during any season (i.e. a quieter winter can benefit many eager buyers who are ready to brave the elements, while autumn can see a rush of properties entering the market in time to sell before winter), spring remains the busiest period. There is no reason to expect this to be different in 2019, with certain market conditions indicating that now might be a strong time to put your home on the market.

In late May this year, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority loosened home loan rules in an effort to incentivise both lenders and home buyers.

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics has revealed that the number of owner-occupied finance commitments decreased by 0.5 per cent in May this year, which was the twenty-first consecutive month of decreases and the lowest since August 2012. Investment housing commitments is shown to be at its lowest level since March 2009.

Following this tightening of lending, much of which came as a result of the Royal Commission into the financial sector and stricter regulations for APRA in regards to interest-only lending, APRA acted in late May to remove the requirement of lenders to apply a ‘stress test’ for potential mortgage holders. This required lenders to establish if lendees were capable of affording a 7 per cent interest rate on their mortgage repayments.

With the Reserve Bank of Australia cutting the cash rate to a historic low of 1.00 per cent in July and with the rate of property value declines in the major markets showing signs of not only slowing down but reversing, there is a strong argument for vendors acting quickly to make the most of an expected increase in buyer activity in spring.

The continuing decline in financing commitments recorded by the ABS in May was prior to APRA’s loosening of lending stress test requirements and was also during a federal election month, which would have had an impact on buyer sentiment and uncertainty. These factors seem to have all worked in unison to begin shifting buyer behavior and the market in general, as revealed in July housing value figures. Read More…

Sponsor Ads

• Ad Space Available - Rent it Now!

Report this Page

Created on Sep 16th 2019 07:19. Viewed 404 times.

Share on APSense

Comments