Real estate
Sydney falls, rents soar: Australia’s market splits
For the first time in the current cycle, home values are falling in Sydney and Melbourne, even as rents rise 5.9% nationally. Rates back at 4.35%, a tax shake-up for landlords, and a record low in consumer confidence: three forces behind a housing market that’s splitting in two.
Real estate: bubbles, investment and housing policy
Real estate is the world’s largest asset class, and one of the least understood. Price-to-income ratios, cap rates, bubble dynamics, rent control, zoning: the concepts that explain why housing markets behave the way they do, in any country, at any point in the cycle.
Interest rates: how monetary policy moves the economy
When central banks move their key rate by a quarter of a point, mortgage costs shift, currencies fluctuate, and stock markets reprice, sometimes within minutes. Understanding why that happens is the starting point for reading any major economic event of the past two decades.