A report from the Australian Financial Review. "Developers are offering financial advisers and mortgage brokers 'massive' commissions of nearly 9 per cent to sell completed apartments, or about $70,000 for an $800,000 apartment. That’s a 30 per cent increase commission on the highest rates paid last year and is a top-up on the additional commission or cash payments paid by clients for arranging a deal, or finance."

"Deals are flooding the market, particularly around central Melbourne, as vacancies levels rise, projects started at the height of the real estate boom are completed, demand falls and potential buyers grow increasingly wary of dodgy building standards and fire risk from exterior cladding. Overseas' buyer numbers have also fallen steeply."

"Two out of three Melbourne apartments sold off the plan during the past eight years have made no price gains, or have lost money upon resale, despite a property boom and record immigration, according to analysis by BIS Oxford Economics. In Brisbane about half are selling at a loss, or no profit, over the same period, while for Sydney it is about one in four since 2015, the analysis reveals."

"The number of vacant investor-owned properties in Melbourne remains high, with as many as 16.2 per cent homes sitting empty, according to analysis based on water usage."

From The Feed. "Around 16 per cent of investment properties in Melbourne could be empty, according to a new report by Prosper Australia. Vacant properties indicate owners are leaving residential homes unused, without putting them on the rental market, or up for purchase."

"The report analysed the water consumption of over a million properties in the city and found a total of 60,000 homes used little to no water in 2017. No water usage suggests no occupant. Prosper Australia project director Karl Fitzgerald said vacancies are unethical and should not be encouraged."

"'We grew up with this narrative that the harder you work the luckier you are, but now the economic system is rigged for landowners to buy and wait to make money,' he said."

"Melbourne remains the number one target for foreign investors in Australia, according to last years annual report by The Foreign Investment Review Board. But Mr Fitzgerald said domestic investors are the majority. 'Excessive foreign investment should be addressed, but domestic investors remain the largest investors.'"

"The average house price in Melbourne is around $800,000 and there are over 24,000 homeless people in the city."

From Domain News. "Sydney renters are spoilt for choice, with lower prices and less competition as more properties hit the market. Domain senior research analyst Dr Nicola Powell said the number of units on the market across Sydney was up more than 20 per cent year on year, while houses were up almost 13 per cent."

"'Current rental conditions provide tenants with a window of opportunity to negotiate rents and terms,' Dr Powell said. 'Meanwhile landlords will face greater competition to secure a tenant resulting in rent reductions.'"

"With an increasing number of rentals coming onto the market, the days of finding a tenant in less than a week are long gone, said Rachel Beadman, head of property management at Phillips Pantzer Donnelley."

"'It’s competitive and days on market are getting longer, Ms Beadman said. 'A year ago you wouldn’t have had people putting an offer in under the market asking price, traditionally price were driven up … whereas now it’s going the other way.'"

"'If a property is on the market for $1000 a week, [tenants] are probably trying for around $900,' Ms Beadman said. Rents for high-end, family houses had come down more significantly, dropping hundreds of dollars, she said."

"Lauren Beare of The Agency said that in her 18 years in the industry, she had never experienced a market where tenants had so much choice. While once tenants turned up to open homes, they had not even set foot in, with completed applications, they were now knocking back offers to go for their preferred property."

"Ms Beare said the time taken to find a tenant on the lower north shore rose about 20 per cent and that, with prices falling, landlords who didn’t meet the market faced an even longer wait. 'As much as we want to advertise the rent at the current level [when re-letting], it’s going to sit on the market for weeks if we do that,' she said."

From ABC News. "NAB has revised down its prediction for property prices in Australia's two biggest cities, saying the fall in values since the start of last year has exceeded its forecasts. 'We now expect Sydney to decline by around 20 per cent from peak to trough, while Melbourne is expected to fall around 15 per cent,' NAB Group chief economist Alan Oster said."

"According to CoreLogic estimates, real estate prices in Sydney have fallen about 14 per cent since their peak in 2017 while the slump in Melbourne has averaged about 10 per cent."

The Irish Examiner. "The worst case scenario is that Australia could be the location of the next impact crater for the IMF to fret over and the first since Cyprus 2012 to experience haircuts on deposits. The best case scenario is that Australia becomes a textbook example of controlled deflation of a housing bubble."

"Last month global financial markets flashed a strong warning that all is not well; the US bond market curve inverted. This is almost always a harbinger of a recession to come later this year or next. What happens in the USA impacts Australia as much as it does Europe but the economy Down Under is also bound at the hip to Chinese Construction demand for commodities like iron ore."

"Chinese household debt has now risen to half of its GDP much earlier along the pathway to prosperity taken by South Korea and Japan and 40% of its loan book is real estate. Half of new debt is residential in a country that is sitting on at least 60 million empty dwellings."

"Credit growth is collapsing to zero this year in Australia according to UBS forecasts. Homeloan demand has shrunk, foreign buyers are pulling out, there is a clamp down on fresh interest only mortgages and First Time Buyer sales have tanked to lows not seen for 17 years."

"Unless you’ve been through one, it is very hard to grasp the psychology of a bubble burst. Rising deafness accompanies the journey to the tipping point, fear changes to panic only when price falls don’t plateau and the emotional virus released infects everything."

"It is reasonable, in light of the prevailing evidence, to ask if we are watching the early signs of an Australian debt asteroid strike. No one knows for sure, on its own the AUD $2 trillion held by foreign creditors indicates the potential fallout field but these things don’t happen in isolation and debt is elevated elsewhere. That is why Australia matters. Lets hope they don’t do a full Irish."