Let’s consider factors influencing activity and prices. To date, we have had six interest-rate increases. We have an increasing population; there is a shortage of dwellings for them and the vacancy rate has been below 2 per cent for the past five years.In July there were 2959 auctions, with a clearance rate of 67.5 per cent for the month; in June there were 3203 auctions with a clearance rate of 68 per cent.

The strongest demand is in the suburbs, with prices at or below the median ($559,500), such as Watsonia, Ferntree Gully, Macleod and Dandenong.

In the higher-priced east and south-eastern suburbs, activity has softened. But with about 700 auctions scheduled for after the federal election, this may be seasonal.

A record total of $18.8 billion has been transacted so far this year; in 2009 it was $13.5 billion and in 2008 it was $13.1 billion.

So, while clearance rates and private sale numbers will fluctuate for various reasons, property prices are still increasing. So, are we in a housing bubble?

If you consider the influencing factors, it is difficult to see any real drop in property prices other than through another economic crisis.

Source: Domain.com.au

Balance Transfer your credit card balance today.

It’s hard not to be disappointed by the returns on superannuation in recent years but take heart, writes Annette Sampson.

The best balanced super funds reported returns of 10 per cent or more in the past financial year. But if you feel like you’ve been treading water, rather than building a healthy nest egg for retirement, you wouldn’t be far wrong. The average fund is still in the red over the past three years and has barely beaten inflation over the past five.Figures from the research company SuperRatings show that 2009-10 was a good year for super, with the average balanced fund reporting a return of 9.8 per cent. (These funds have 60 per cent to 76 per cent of their investments in so-called “growth” assets like shares and property and are most commonly used by Australian investors.)

..But they needed a good year. After significant losses the previous two years, the average fund has still lost 3.5 per cent a year averaged over the past three years. Even going back five years – which includes the sharemarket boom – funds have averaged a mere 3.5 per cent a year, outgrowing inflation.

As the graph shows, if you had invested $50,000 in the average balanced fund on June 30, 2005, it would have grown to just less than $60,000 now, though you’d have experienced a hell of a ride along the way.

Just a few short months ago, at the end of April, your $50,000 would have been worth more than $62,000; in October 2007 it would have topped $68,000; but by February 2009 it would have been almost back where you started at a mere $51,000.

What’s more, the figures show that even over the past 10 years, the median balanced fund returned just 4.51 per cent, well below the common objective of inflation plus 3 per cent or 4 per cent.

TWO MARKET CRASHES

As the chief executive of the industry fund REST, Damian Hill, points out, that’s partly a timing glitch. The past 10 years have been atypical, including not one but two market crashes – the global financial crisis and the tech wreck of 2000-2001. In a year’s time, failing another big downturn, that 10-year figure should improve substantially.

Over the past seven years (which excludes the tech wreck) SuperRatings says the median balanced fund has done much better – an annual return of 6.21 per cent.

Look really long term and they have done better over the past 20 years as well, with an annual return of 7.23 per cent. But it’s still hard not to feel disappointed.

The chief executive of the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees, Fiona Reynolds, says it’s important for fund members to remember that while the past year has been a good one, super funds – like the world economy – are still recovering from “the worst financial crisis seen in our lifetime”.

“When you look at the headline figures you think you could have done better putting your money elsewhere but super is still valuable,” she says. “Australians are not savers and without compulsory super many people wouldn’t be saving for their retirement. You’ve also got to remember that most people will be in the workforce for 30 or 40 years, so even 10-year returns don’t give the full picture.”

The chief executive of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, Pauline Vamos, says it will take some time for markets to recover from the GFC and super fund account balances won’t spring back overnight, either. “Markets fell 35 per cent to 45 per cent,” she says. “The average return for funds in that time was about minus 14 per cent.”

But over the past 40 years, she says super funds have returned about 11.7 per cent a year. “That’s well in excess of the annual increase in inflation of 5.9 per cent over the same period,” she says. “If you take that and the tax concessions offered both within super funds and when you retire, super is still the most secure and best-return investment around.”

Hill says while super funds are unlikely to meet their goals all the time, investors should look for persistency – that ability to meet what they set out to do over time. “The last 10 years have been unusual but they do highlight that when you have double-digit returns for five years, as we had before the GFC, it’s very difficult to sustain that,” he says. “Over full market cycles it is difficult to increase wealth in a real way.”

DIFFERENCE PAID OFF

Averages can also be misleading. As Reynolds says, many funds have actually managed to achieve their goals over the past 10 years, with many not-for-profit funds returning about 7 per cent. SuperRatings says REST’s balanced option was the best public-offer balanced fund over the past decade, with a return of 7 per cent, ahead of Buss(Q) with 6.3 per cent and Equipsuper (5.9 per cent).

Hill says this can be attributed to a willingness to invest on fundamentals rather than following the herd.
“We had very low weightings to global equities prior to the tech crash and no listed property trusts in 2007 plus quite a degree of cash going into the financial crisis,” he says. “We went quite heavily into equities and credit in late 2008/early 2009 even though the crisis wasn’t over.

“The fundamentals were such that we might get our timing wrong for even two or three years but we had skewed the fundamentals in our favour. We were prepared to give up some returns.”

Hill believes the tendency of funds to focus on their relative performance to other funds works against fund members. Each fund has its own membership demographic and he would “love to see more focus on whether the trustees have met their objectives for those members” rather than where they rank in short-term performance figures.

He says the fund also realised during the GFC how important absolute, rather than relative, performance is to members. During the tech wreck, he says, REST lost money but did very well compared with other funds. But all members could see was that their accounts had gone backwards.

There’s a natural temptation when times are bad to decide it’s safer and simpler to keep your money in cash. In fact, as the graph shows, you’d have done better in cash over the past five years. That $50,000 investment would have growth to $62,485 – or about $2500 more than in a balanced fund. But as Reynolds points out, investors are notorious for switching to cash at the wrong time, realising losses when markets are down and missing out on recoveries. SuperRatings’ figures show the median cash fund returned just 3.3 per cent last year, against 9.8 per cent for the median balanced fund.

Over longer periods, Vamos says, a balanced portfolio generally does much better than cash: “Super is a long-term investment. You can’t measure it against what you’re currently getting on money in the bank.”

The SuperRatings figures show the importance of a diversified portfolio over time. Those investors who chose international shares in 2005 have done appallingly badly, losing 2.1 per cent a year for the past five years and 5.03 per cent a year over the past 10 years.

VARIED PERFORMANCE

But even within funds of the same type, performance can vary dramatically. According to SuperRatings, the best balanced fund last year, Local Government Super’s balanced growth fund, was well into double digits with a return of 12.8 per cent. All the top 10 managed more than 10 per cent ( the worst performer returned 4.7 per cent).

Reynolds says that while you shouldn’t switch funds on the basis of short-term performance (master funds, for instance, did better last year as they have more money in shares and listed property but they were hit harder when the value of these was falling), even over longer periods, there can be big differences between the best and worst performers. Over the past five years, OSF Super had the best-performing balanced fund, with an annual return of 5.8 per cent according to SuperRatings; the worst performer registered just 0.1 per cent. There was a similar range of returns for most growth-style funds but even with more conservative investments, which you’d expect to deliver closer figures, there were big differences between best and worst.

Over the past five years, SuperRatings reports the best cash fund managed an annual return of 5.3 per cent, almost double the 2.7 per cent of the worst performer. And the return of the best capital stable fund, at 5.9 per cent a year, was more than four times that of the 1.3 per cent return reported by the worst (see page 13). “If you can see persistent outperformance by other funds over longer periods you need to seriously consider moving,” Reynolds says, although you wouldn’t make that decision on the basis of just one or two bad years.

IMPACT OF FEES

Fees can also make a big difference to fund returns and are already coming under increasing pressure, given the focus on costs by the recent Cooper review of the super system.

The managing director of SuperRatings, Jeff Bresnahan, says the average funds earned about 11 per cent before fees in the past financial year but didn’t report double-digit returns because fees had to come out of this figure. While the industry claims fees have come down in percentage terms, they have risen in absolute terms because of the continuing flow of new money into super.

As with returns, there are big differences in fees between funds with similar investment strategies.

Recent SuperRatings analysis for Money found average fees on $50,000 range from 0.78 per cent for corporate funds to 2.07 per cent for retail master funds, though individual funds have both higher and lower fee levels.

Reynolds says the average fund fee is about 1.25 per cent and the Cooper review indicated it would like to see fees below 1 per cent; anyone paying close to 2 per cent or more needs to question whether they are getting value, as high fees can make a big difference to returns over the longer term.

Vamos says you can’t just look at fees in isolation.

“We’re finally starting to see a focus on net returns after fees, taxes and taking risk into account,” she says.

“That’s the real measure of whether a fund is performing.

“You have to look at what has ended up in members’ accounts.”

While the latest performance figures should provide comfort that funds are recovering lost ground, there are still very real questions as to where we go from here. Has recent market volatility been merely the result of markets having recovered too much too fast, or are we facing the prospect of a double-dip international recession?

CHALLENGES AHEAD

Hill says we’ll certainly see continuing volatility and shakiness, especially in Europe. “We won’t be going back to the environment of the mid-2000s. Growth will be stronger in emerging markets but there will be high volatility and anaemic growth in the developed world so investors will need to remain very diversified,” he says.

“If you make too many big bets it could go very long and long-term performance will suffer significantly.

“We also need to focus on the fundamentals of individual investments rather than indexing, because you could get caught up in the greed or fear cycle. It’s important … to have real assets with a very strong likelihood of generating strong yields for long periods.”

Vamos says most super funds have reviewed their investment strategy in the wake of the GFC to see whether there are better ways of maximising returns while minimising risk.

“One thing they have learnt is that you can’t automatically say certain types of assets are growth or defensive,” she says. “Funds are having to focus on the characteristics of individual assets within their portfolios.

“Equities, for example, can be growth or defensive assets depending on the nature of the underlying company.

“It’s all about understanding these complexities and getting the maximum efficiency from the overall portfolio.” Hill says the GFC also emphasised the importance of liquidity in portfolios.

But while he wouldn’t want to increase REST’s holding of unlisted assets, he says criticism of funds holding unlisted assets fails to acknowledge they generally give stable yields. “They can be attractive at the right price,” he says.

Bresnahan is also hopeful that the recent recovery will boost members’ confidence and interest in their super accounts. “Notwithstanding the struggling short-to-medium-term results for our major super funds, when Australians finally see a solid positive return on their member statement this year we should begin to see a gradual improvement in consumer confidence.

Since the onset of the GFC, consumers have shut down activity with their super funds, with personal contributions down by more than 50 per cent and transfers between funds and new memberships running at significantly lower levels,” he says.

In a sign the country’s love affair with property investment has recovered from the financial crisis, the value of new lending to investors reached $7.66 billion, the highest monthly figure since January 2008.

The figures suggest demand from owner-occupiers may also be on the mend, despite the prospect of higher interest rates after 1.5 percentage points worth of increases since October.

Yet with auction clearance rates heading downhill and the number of new loans still near a nine-year low, analysts say property markets will remain sluggish for a while.

The chief economist at Nomura, Stephen Roberts, said the bounce in lending was overshadowed by other signs of weakness in housing. Sydney’s auction clearance rate fell to 49 per cent at the weekend, a far cry from its 75 per cent peak in April.

”Much of the housing market is pretty stagnant now. It’s going to be in the doldrums for a little while yet,” Mr Roberts said. This slowing could provide the Reserve Bank with ”breathing space” before it raised interest rates further – a move widely expected by economists.

”They’ve got a little bit more time to monitor things while the housing sector has stopped being uncomfortably frothy,” Mr Roberts said.

Markets are factoring in a slim chance that interest rates will rise next month, but some analysts say a strong inflation reading could force the Reserve Bank’s hand. In contrast to the increased lending to investors and owner-occupiers, the role of first-home buyers continued to dwindle.

First-home buyers made up 16.1 per cent of the market, compared to a 28.5 per cent record high a year earlier. Lending for construction fell 2.2 per cent, prompting warnings from the Housing Industry Association that weak building activity would exacerbate a housing shortage.

“Impediments to a sustained housing recovery must be removed if we are to have any chance of supplying sufficient new housing to meet demand,” the HIA’s chief executive, Graham Wolfe, said.

Meanwhile, separate figures from the Reserve Bank showed shoppers were gradually allowing their credit card debt to build up while curbing their use of debit cards.

According to CommSec, the average balance rose by $14.60 to $3248.60 in May. The average outstanding balance that was attracting interest charges also crept up, to $2387.70.

The chief economist at Commsec, Craig James, said this suggested a relaxation in conservative attitudes to debt, but shoppers remained cautious about how much money they spent.

”Consumers are indeed shopping around for bargains, but with the job market firmer, they appear to be willing to put their credit card to greater use alongside with their debit cards.

Source:domain.com.au

Demand for new home loans fell to a nine-year low in April as rising interest rates dampen enthusiasm for housing. Finance commitments for owner-occupied housing fell 1.8 per cent in April, seasonally adjusted, to 47,669, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said today.It was the fewest number of new loans for owner-occupiers since March 2001 and the seventh straight monthly fall in housing finance commitments.

Total housing finance by value rose by 0.8 per cent in April, seasonally adjusted, to $21.7 billion.

Nomura chief economist Stephen Roberts said demand for new housing loans continued to wane as the prospect of higher interest rates deterred potential buyers.

The Reserve Bank of Australia lifted the overnight cash rate by a quarter percentage point to 4.25 on April 6, its fifth such move since October 2009. Subsequently, the RBA raised the cash rate to 4.5 per cent in May.

‘‘We know housing affordability has deteriorated sharply for many buyers,’’ Mr Roberts said. ‘‘You would be expecting this style of behaviour and you would not expect a change anytime soon.’’

He said the fall in April was a soft indicator for housing, which would flow through to other sectors of the economy.

‘It (the number of new home loans) has fallen 26 per cent since its recent peak (in June 2009),’’ Mr Roberts said. It is very much a soft indication for housing.

‘With a lag, you would expect these numbers to flow through to building approvals and housing starts.’’

Rates to remain on hold

4Cast Financial Markets economist Michael Turner said the data added to the case for the RBA to continue to hold the cash rate at 4.5 per cent next month.

‘‘Housing finance is still dropping, which plays to the general theme that policy moves have gained a fair bit of traction,’’ he said. ‘‘There’s still a lot of (construction) work in the pipeline to come.’’

He said the NSW government’s decision to abolish some forms of stamp duty will add to a boost in construction in the coming months.

‘‘Construction will get a boost from the abolishment of stamp duty,’’ Mr Turner said. ‘‘When it gets a boost like that, you’d expect construction to pick up in the second half of the year.’’

As part of its 2010/11 budget, the NSW government announced people buying homes off the plan worth up to $600,000 will be exempt from stamp duty costs.

Those aged over 65 will be exempt from the tax when they buy any new home under $600,000. Both policy initiatives take effect on July 1.

AAP

THE stockmarket was sharply lower by late afternoon and the weak Australian dollar remained vulnerable as investors reeled amid fears about the risks of slowdown in the global economy.
 
Markets in Asia were also not immune to the steep falls on Wall Street last Friday, as investors sought shelter in the yen and the US dollar as well as government bonds in countries that were considered by financial markets to have little exposure to the Europe’s widening debt crisis.The weakness in the Australian dollar was compounded by the decline in the euro, which fell below $US1.19 in Asian trading today for the first time since March 2006, as the European sovereign debt troubles spread to Hungary and investors reduced risky currency bets.

The Australian dollar fell just below US81c in the morning session, taking its losses since Friday’s domestic close to as much as 4.3 per cent. Since mid-April the Australian dollar has slid by more than 13 per cent.

By late this afternoon, the Aussie dollar had recovered some losses to be trading at US81.44c.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index had fallen almost 150 points in the morning session — equivalent to a 3.4 per cent decline — and had briefly dipped below 4300 points. Since its 2010 intraday peak of 5025.10, touched mid-April, the S&P/ASX 200 has dropped about 14 per cent.

By late afternoon today, the S&P/ASX 200 was down 131.2 points, 2.95 per cent, to 4318.2 and the broader All Ordinaries was 2.88 per cent lower at 4343.6.

“We simply can’t get a feel for this market,” IG Markets analyst Ben Potter said in a note late this afternoon.

What are these? More than 40pc of Australians spend more than half their monthly salary on paying off debt. MORE than 40 per cent of Australians spend around half their monthly income repaying mortgages, credit cards or personals loans, a new survey has found.The online survey conducted by mortgage broker Loan Market indicates that many have little left to spend at the end of the month and how vulnerable they are to interest rate fluctuations.

Almost 30 per cent of the 400 respondents to the survey said they spent more than 50 per cent of their income on debt repayments.

Releasing the survey result on Thursday, Loan Market chief operating officer Dean Ruston said this was “quite a staggering statistic”.

He said the Reserve Bank had a delicate task responding to the economic recovery while also having to consider the incredibly high debt burdens consumers are carrying.

The central bank raised the cash rate to 4.25 per cent this week, the the fifth increase in seven months.

Economists expect more to come in coming months, possibly as early as May.

“If official rates go back up to traditional levels of around 5.5 per cent from the current level of 4.25 per cent too quickly then a lot of mortgage holders will be struggling to make their repayments,” Mr Rushton said.

He said new borrowers should always factor in interest rates being higher when applying for home finance.

SOME Sydney suburbs will have their populations double or even quadruple in just 25 years, official NSW documents reveal, as the city hurtles towards a population of six million people by 2036. Official projections obtained by The Daily Telegraph predicted Camden’s population would explode by 390 per cent to about 250,000 people in 2036 as a massive development takes shape in the area.

Liverpool would have the second biggest boom, almost doubling to 324,000, and Burwood would grow by almost three-quarters.

Even the already jam-packed Sydney CBD and inner-city were projected to grow by 60 per cent.

Overall, the Sydney metropolitan area would grow from 4.55 million in 2011 to 5.98 million.

The figures were contained in a State Government study which charted growth across metropolitan and regional NSW.
It is understood they were not targets the Government was seeking to achieve but projections based on existing patterns – forcing the Government to provide the infrastructure, including transport, to cope with a population explosion.

While many areas of the city, especially the south-west, have long been earmarked as high-growth areas, the size and scope of the boom in some areas is extraordinary.

It also explains why the Government has focused its attentions on transport in the south-west rather than the north-west.

Ten local areas will have their populations increase by more than 50 per cent – Camden, Liverpool, Burwood, Auburn, Wollondilly, Sydney, Wyong, Campbelltown, Baulkham Hills and Strathfield.

By region, the greatest growth would be in the south-west (up 113 per cent) and the north-west (52 per cent).

The least growth was projected in Sydney’s south (15 per cent) and north-east (18 per cent).

Outside Sydney, the greatest growth was on the South Coast (42 per cent), the Sydney-Canberra corridor (42 per cent) and the Central Coast (39 per cent).

The Hunter’s population would also grow significantly, from about 650,000 to more than 800,000 in 2036.

And the Illawarra would add almost 100,000 residents, growing from 434,000 to 529,000.

Source: News.com.au

As expected first home buyers have set a record last year for the largest ever increase of purchasing homes. With the government boosted grant it has been no surprise that many first home buyers took the opportunity to get on the property ladder. However as with everything there is no doubt with that 2010 will see the biggest drop in home buyers since records began.

FIRST-HOME buyers leapt to the highest level on record during last year, with 191,000 Australians taking their first step on the property ladder.
Last year saw almost 70,000 more first-home buyers pile into the market than in 2008, a 55 per cent leap, according to property research firm RP Data.

The jump is directly linked to the government doubling the first-home buyers grant to $14,000 for existing dwellings and increasing the handout to $21,000 for new dwellings. The grant boost was phased back in December, The Australian reported.

The government’s boosted grant was announced in October 2008, providing a stimulus during the global financial crisis.

But adding to the equation was interest rates at 49-year lows.

Cameron Kusher of RP Data said the month that recorded the highest owner-occupier finance commitments was May, when 28.8 per cent of the commitments were from first-home buyers.

“During 2009, owner-occupiers took out finance for approximately 739,000 dwellings, of which 26 per cent was taken out by first-home buyers and the remaining 74 per cent came from non-first-home buyers,” Mr Kusher said.

“It’s no real surprise that first-home buyers were so active during 2009, given that the government was
offering the First Home Owners Grant Boost.”

Western Australia was the most popular state for first-home buyers last year. State government incentives of low or no stamp duty also boosted the market, as did a softening in property values during 2008.

Mr Kusher said that between 1992 and 2009 there was an average of just over 116,000 first-home buyers annually.

“Not only was the level of activity during 2009 the highest on record, it was 64 per cent greater than the long-term average level of activity,” he said.

During December last year, after the first-home buyers grant had been reduced, first-home buyers made up 21 per cent of the owner-occupier market, just 1 per cent higher than the historical average.

“We would expect that during 2010 they will sit at a similar, if not lower, level than the historical average,” Mr Kusher said.

“By anticipating that first-home buyers will at least fall back to historic average levels during 2010, we expect to see a turnaround in rental markets, with higher rents throughout the year, and expect that with less competition, investors will become more active in the marketplace.”

On a state-by-state basis, the second-greatest proportion of home loans for first-home buyers was found in Victoria (26.9 per cent), followed by NSW (26.8 per cent).

The markets that had the lowest proportion of first-home buyers during 2009 were South Australia (20.6 per cent), Northern Territory (21.1 per cent) and the ACT (22 per cent).

If you are looking for personal finance and like the majority of Australians finding it hard then you might be in for a change. Reports in the media suggest that the way your credit score is compiled and viewed by credit agencies and leading lenders is about to change.FOR too long, banks and other lenders have judged your credit risk based on failed applications and defaults, but that is changing.

Positive credit reporting is coming, and if you are a good bill payer, you should be able to use it to your advantage.

Many Australians don’t understand how their credit report is compiled and are unaware of the information credit providers use to make their lending decisions.

At present, your credit report will list all loan applications but not whether they were approved, any defaults of more than 90 days and bankruptcies.

Essentially all the bad stuff. The good stuff won’t be counted until 2011.

Financial planner Joel Palmer of Palmer Portfolios says every time you apply for finance or default on a payment, the details are recorded in a database that is accessed by all financial institutions.

“If you apply for 27 credit cards in two months, or miss a few too many payments, you’ll end up with a black mark against your name and find it next to impossible to obtain new finance,” he says.

“Positive credit reporting forces banks and credit card companies to report our good qualities, not just the bad.

“Let’s say you’ve had a home loan for 15 years, never missed a payment, and always had your credit card under control.

“If Australia had a positive credit reporting system, you would then show up on the database as an extremely good credit risk.

“The major benefit for you is that banks will then be falling over themselves to lend you money.”

Credit reporting agency Dun & Bradstreet’s chief executive, Christine Christian, says positive credit reporting is used in the US and other developed countries.

“People think paying an overdue debt will remove the listing from their credit report: This is untrue. Negative records such as collection accounts, late payments and bankruptcies stay on your credit report for up to seven years, even if you pay them off,” she says.

Ms Christian says people wrongly think low-value or non-bank debts are less important than big ticket items such as a home mortgage.

“The size of the debt and its source is irrelevant all negative payment behaviours will be listed on your credit report,” she says.

Anyone can access a free copy of their credit report through a credit reporting bureau.

Article: news.com.au

You have probably realised without talking or mentioning to anyone that rental prices have stayed put in the last 12 months. This is a big change from 2008 when rental prices suddenly shot up. Report from the Australian Property Monitors are indicating that rental prices in 2010 are on the way back up. News.com.au reports: RENTS across Australia stagnated and in some cases even fell in the December quarter, but are expected to rise later this year.

A report to be released by Australian Property Monitors today says last year was the weakest for national rental growth since 2002.

The two per cent increase nationally was well down on the average rate of 12 per cent for 2007 and 2008, The Australian reports.

APM economist Matthew Bell said rises in median rents in Perth, Adelaide and Canberra for the December quarter were not enough to offset flat rental markets in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. But he said December was likely to be the last quarter of flat rental growth.

Factors that would help the rental markets included the end of the boosted first-home buyers grant, brighter employment prospects, strong house price growth and low vacancy rates.

High population growth, climbing interest rates and taxes, and low supply would also support rental increases.

Mr Bell predicted Sydney rents would increase by at least double the 2009 rate of 2.2 per cent and Melbourne’s rents should rise by five to seven per cent after a flat year.

He also predicted Perth median house rents could climb 11 per cent this year, in line with the average growth rate of 12.4 per cent experienced since 2003, while Brisbane rents should lift by about eight per cent.

While APM flags a strong lift in rents is likely this year, property managers and landlords reported that the market had remained soft so far this month, which is typically the busiest month for the rental market.

Chris Rolls, managing director of the Gold Coast and Brisbane residential property manager Rental Express, said: “We have found this is the slowest start to the year for the last five years.”

Mr Rolls, who owns a four-bedroom rental property in Brisbane suburb Kelvin Grove, said the contract for the property came up for renewal in 10 days and he had opted to keep the rent at $520 a week in the hope that the current tenants would not leave.

“The risk is that if you increase the rent, and they don’t pay it and instead move out, I won’t get the same rent. It was top rent 12 months ago,” Mr Rolls said.

News.com.au