Sydney is in the grip of a housing bubble, Australia’s most senior economic bureaucrat said in one of the strongest warnings yet by a government official.
“When you look at the housing price bubble evidence, it’s unequivocally the case in Sydney — unequivocally,” Australian Treasury Secretary John Fraser said in testimony before a parliamentary committee in Canberra yesterday. “Frankly, whatever the data says, just casual observation would tell you that’s the case.”
Home prices in Sydney rose 15 percent last month from a year earlier although they fell 0.7 percent from April, according to Corelogic RP Data.
Australia’s major banks have said they would curb growth in home loans to investors after the nation’s financial services regulator asked lenders to limit expansion of these mortgages to 10 percent a year.
“It does worry me that the very, very low — historically low — levels of interest rates are encouraging people to perhaps overinvest in housing,” Fraser said.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cut its cash rate target to a record 2 percent last month while lending to investors is near a record high.
The proportion of home lending to speculators rose to 40.8 percent in March, just shy of the 40.9 percent record in December, according to government statistics.
RBA Assistant Governor Malcolm Edey, who also appeared before the committee, said the central bank had avoided characterizing the housing market as a bubble because the term is defined differently by different people.
“A lot of people do think it’s a bubble; serious people think that, and we agree that this is a situation where the market is strong. It’s overheated; it’s a risky situation,” he told the committee.
The measures taken by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority on mortgage lending are starting to have an effect on banks’ behavior, Edey added.
Fraser, who took up his role in January, said he did not see the house price gains as a major risk to the financial sector.
“We do a lot of consultations with the banks, the four major banks and we recently had in the regional banks, and they’re very much alive to the issues and they’ve taken their own internal measures, as they should, to make sure their exposure is manageable,” he told the committee.
House price moves have been more modest elsewhere in the country, having increased 9 percent on average across the country’s eight state and territory capital cities from a year earlier.
The price gains have spurred a pick up in dwelling investment with building approvals having risen 16.3 percent in April from a year earlier, data released yesterday showed.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said its materials management head, Vanessa Lee (李文如), had tendered her resignation for personal reasons. The personnel adjustment takes effect tomorrow, TSMC said in a statement. The latest development came one month after Lee reportedly took leave from the middle of last month. Cliff Hou (侯永清), senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer, is to concurrently take on the role of head of the materials management division, which has been under his supervision, TSMC said. Lee, who joined TSMC in 2022, was appointed senior director of materials management and
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Thursday met with US President Donald Trump at the White House, days before a planned trip to China by the head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, people familiar with the matter said. Details of what the two men discussed were not immediately available, and the people familiar with the meeting declined to elaborate on the agenda. Spokespeople for the White House had no immediate comment. Nvidia declined to comment. Nvidia’s CEO has been vocal about the need for US companies to access the world’s largest semiconductor market and is a frequent visitor to China.
Hypermarket chain Carrefour Taiwan and upscale supermarket chain Mia C’bon on Saturday announced the suspension of their partnership with Jkopay Co (街口支付), one of Taiwan’s largest digital payment providers, amid a lawsuit involving its parent company. Carrefour and Mia C’bon said they would notify customers once Jkopay services are reinstated. The two retailers joined an array of other firms in suspending their partnerships with Jkopay. On Friday night, popular beverage chain TP Tea (茶湯會) also suspended its use of the platform, urging customers to opt for alternative payment methods. Another drinks brand, Guiji (龜記), on Friday said that it is up to individual
READY TO BUY: Shortly after Nvidia announced the approval, Chinese firms scrambled to order the H20 GPUs, which the company must send to the US government for approval Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) late on Monday said the technology giant has won approval from US President Donald Trump’s administration to sell its advanced H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to China. The news came in a company blog post late on Monday and Huang also spoke about the coup on China’s state-run China Global Television Network in remarks shown on X. “The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the post said. “Today, I’m announcing that the US government has approved for us
RSS