Second investment property: where serviceability replaces savings

Most investors clear the first deposit hurdle. Fewer realise the second purchase is gated by debt capacity, not capital.

Sydney clearance rate drop forces Enmore vendors to cut price guides

Auctions are clearing 10-15 percentage points below spring averages as sellers face the choice: drop the guide or extend the campaign.

Australian property investors eyeing New Zealand: what the search spike reveals

Cross-Tasman property searches have surged since May. Is this a real shift in capital allocation, or just browsing?

Developer insolvency uncovers $700m gap administrators can’t trace

Administrators report a seven-hundred-million-dollar shortfall with no clear paper trail, raising questions about what lenders actually knew.

Falling property prices vs rising rate risk: the math that matters

Buyers are locking in discounts before rates potentially rise again, but the trade-off only works if the numbers stack up over the life of the loan.

Offshore office exit: what Suntec’s $1b sell-down signals for local buyers

A Singapore REIT flags a billion-dollar Australian office disposal. The question isn't why they're leaving, it's what price they'll accept.

Melbourne house prices set to fall further despite clearance rate uptick

Victoria's auction clearance rate hit a four-month high last week, yet volume collapsed and median prices remain below lockdown levels, so what's really driving this divergence?
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Brisbane rezoning 27,000 homes: supply numbers vs delivery reality

Bowen Hills gets height limits doubled and planning fast-tracked, but construction capacity and feasibility will decide if 27,000 dwellings actually arrive.

Builder insolvencies: how contract type decides who survives cost blow-outs

Wage bills at 30-year highs, input costs spiking, yet builders are still signing fixed-price deals to win work. Who absorbs the squeeze and what it means for your build.

Granny flat approval: state rules, timelines and whether the numbers stack up

Secondary dwellings are selling as a density fix, but approval speeds and construction costs vary wildly by state, and not every block makes money.

New home construction supply: the 213,000-unit gap nobody’s solving

Sales down four months straight, apprentice numbers tracking the same way, and the policy lever that was supposed to fix this just made it worse.

First-home buyer demand drops 20pc as policy creates wait-and-see

New mortgage figures show first-home buyer activity at a four-year low, but the decline started before the tax changes took effect.

Affordable housing definition: why $1,100/week rents qualify and what changes

A federal bill proposes the first national standard for affordable housing. Without one, schemes worth billions lack income links.

Mortgage super contribution diversion: the $31k interest trade-off

One Nation's 3% pay redirection could cut a decade off loan repayments, but the retirement gap widens fast.

Modular housing Australia: can 10,000 imported homes break the supply gridlock?

A builder claims it can ship 10,000 finished homes a year into Australia, bypassing tradie shortages and council delays, but the logistics, cost structure and regulatory barriers tell a different story.

Financial adviser qualifications lift clears 85%, what it means for brokers

The education overhaul that halved adviser numbers just delivered its first clean data point: 85% now degree-qualified, and the exits have slowed.

Co-housing Australia: from lifestyle fringe to affordability strategy

Shared ownership models are moving from the margins to mainstream necessity, but the financing and legal frameworks still treat them as edge cases.

Private credit lenders face capital test as $200bn sector hits scrutiny

Developer defaults expose the one funding question most investors skip, and regulators are watching.

Refinancing rates drop below 6pc as lenders chase market share

Non-banks and regionals are undercutting the majors by 50-80 basis points. Is it distress or strategy?

RBA rate decision September holds, but October’s inflation data will decide next move

Growth forecast lifted to 1.5%, yet the central bank is expected to keep powder dry until quarterly inflation numbers land in late October.

Interest rate hike distribution: why the pain lands unevenly

Another rate rise would hit recent borrowers hard while missing the households driving services inflation, the blunt instrument problem nobody's solving.

Negative gearing borrowing power cut: investor loses deal mid-settlement

Banks recalculated serviceability after budget night, before settlements closed. A Sydney investor's $700k pre-approval became $450k overnight.

Private credit property lending: the concentration risk nobody priced

Several lenders all backed the same developer group. Now the exposures are surfacing, and they're bigger than the diversification marketing suggested.

Broker commission structures face quiet test as lender merges channels

A non-bank lender's decision to consolidate broker and direct sales under one executive raises a question the industry hasn't settled: what happens when the channel distinction starts to blur?

Non-bank commercial lending hits $10bn, what banks won’t fund

One non-bank's milestone shows where the majors draw the line on development and complex property finance. The $10bn question is what happens when this tier tightens.

Negative equity first home buyers: 480 households now underwater

One in a hundred 5% deposit scheme borrowers sits below break-even, concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne's priciest suburbs, but the guarantee shifts the risk, not the reality.

Property price corrections: which past downturn does 2026 match?

History shows Australian housing bounces back after falls, but the timeline and triggers vary wildly depending on which recession you're comparing to.

Commercial hospitality property: why pubs beat offices in 2026

A family backing pub assets with nine figures while retail landlords chase tenants, the commercial property divide is widening.

Share house renters over 40 now the majority: what it signals

Workers in their 40s and 50s now outnumber students in share houses. The shift marks a structural affordability problem, not a lifestyle choice.

Regional property market correction: which towns face the steepest falls

A decade of 99% regional price growth is unwinding, but not uniformly.

Retail property investment: Blackstone exits last mall as buyers reset

A $3 billion selldown wraps up, but the fact anyone's buying at all signals a split view on what shopping centres are worth now.

Buyer confidence vanishes as property prices fall

Prices are dropping and listings are thin, but hopeful buyers are staying home. What breaks the standoff?

SMSF property loans tighten as banks exit, non-banks reprice risk

Residential SMSF lending shut down in August, but refinancing and commercial deals remain open, at terms that reveal how lenders now view superannuation-backed property risk.

Property depreciation: what previous owners leave behind

Renovations completed before you bought can still qualify for depreciation, but most investors never check.

REIT valuations under pressure: what hostile bids reveal about pricing

A takeover battle at one of Australia's largest lifestyle communities operators has reignited the debate over whether real estate investment trusts are cheap or overvalued.

Rentvesting strategy fails the cashflow test in 2026

Live in the city, buy regional, the maths that worked for a decade now bleeds money every month.

Super default option: the $230k retirement gap no one talks about

Staying in your fund's preset investment mix costs the average worker six figures by retirement. The maths is simple, but the switch rate is shockingly low.

Living apart together property strategy: when separate homes protect wealth

Older Australians in new relationships are keeping two properties. The tax, pension and estate question: does it actually work?

Adelaide property market holds firm as national cycle turns

Six of Australia's ten strongest LGAs are in South Australia, but the same supply tightness driving performance now could amplify the fall when national headwinds arrive.

Loan default risk jumps 18% in one Geelong suburb

Highton now ranks in Victoria's top 10 for mortgage stress volume. The question: was it regional prices or income squeeze?

Brisbane luxury apartments: can boutique developments hold margins as construction costs climb?

A $130m Toowong riverside tower has sold $40m since launch, but with settlement risk rising across the broader apartment market, can boutique projects maintain pricing power that volume builders are losing?

Property settlement scams: buyers miss fraud signs despite high awareness

Detection confidence dropped 10 percentage points in a year. Meanwhile, 99% failed to spot a fake email address in a controlled test.

Parental property loan or gift: the $100k difference in a breakup

A quarter-million-dollar deposit can vanish into a settlement pool, or stay protected as a liability, depending on one document most families never sign.

Energy efficiency: the hidden line item eating 40% of household budgets

Reverse-cycle air conditioners beat portable heaters by a factor of three. Hot water systems account for a quarter of the average power bill. So why is Australia's housing stock still running on tech from the 1990s?

Superannuation property exposure: June quarter data shows retreat

Funds shifted allocation away from property and unlisted assets as volatility climbed. The question now is whether members missed the exit.

CGT valuation date renovation: when the maths works and when it doesn’t

Spending $80,000 before July 2027 could save tax later, or it could just be $80,000 gone, the difference comes down to three numbers most investors haven't run.

Commercial property investment surges as tax changes redirect capital

Federal tax reforms are pushing billions out of residential holdings, but not all commercial subsectors are absorbing it equally.

Luxury property investment Australia triples: what offshore capital sees

Global developers are pouring capital into branded residences at triple 2015 levels. The question: does this tier ride out a correction, or amplify it?

Premium property price correction deepens: $4.8m loss signals shift

A $4.8m sale at 2023 levels marks the widest vendor loss yet in a market where the top quartile is behaving nothing like the median.

WA housing affordability: repayments hit 47.5% of income

Perth homeowners are now spending nearly half their income on mortgages, more than Sydney's worst quarters in 2023, and rental supply hasn't kept pace with population.

Queensland credit downgrade: tracking the fiscal squeeze from bonds to building sites

State borrows $5bn cheaper at AA+ than AA. When that margin reverses, infrastructure budgets tighten, and developers notice first.

Rental application process: why feedback doesn’t exist and what you can actually control

Dozens of applications, zero explanations. The rental approval system runs on opacity by design, and that creates a fairness problem separate from affordability.

WA foreign developer duty exemption gambles on offshore capital

Foreign developers building for sale in WA now skip transfer duty -- but will it unlock stalled projects or just subsidise developments already breaking ground?

Broker operational costs drive 54% offshore hiring jump: what it signals

An aggregator's Philippines staff count climbed from 193 to 298 in twelve months. The move points to margin pressure most brokers won't name publicly.

Mortgage stress Australia: do deficits drive rates, or is it RBA?

Federal borrowing hit $52bn this year, but the transmission path from deficit to your mortgage is less direct than headlines suggest.

Developer rescue deal collapse shows lenders’ new governance line

A near-$1bn refinancing for a distressed developer walked away over founder involvement, signalling private credit's tightening stance on workout control.

Adelaide CBD Apartment Tower Clears Key Approval Test

A 95-home Franklin Street project has cleared a major hurdle, but approval is not the same as delivery.

The $150m Water Plant That Could Unlock 33,000 Homes

A $200m water plant could open the door to 33,000 homes, but the bigger prize may be Toowoomba’s case for rail.

Data Centre Housing Supply Fight Opens New Investor Risk

A Geelong site planned for homes may become digital infrastructure. The bigger question is who pays when housing land is redirected.