Distinction in travel journalism
Is independent travel journalism important to you?
Click here to keep it independent

11 Mar, 2014

Cashed-up Chinese are pricing the young out of the Australian property market

We need the Chinese. But the growth of the Chinese middle class has been so explosive, and on such a scale, that it has the capacity to affect Australia in ways that will need to be controlled if some trends continue to accelerate. Notably home buying.

There has never been a lower percentage of first-home buyers in the Australian market. They have never had to pay and borrow more to enter the market. Especially in Sydney and Melbourne, where first-home buyers now represent a tiny segment of the market, where traditionally they had been about 20 per cent. This is not culturally healthy.

First-time buyers, young buyers, are now caught in a pincer movement between superannuation and Chinese investment.

Read the rest: Cashed-up Chinese are pricing the young out of the property market.