A report from the Daily Mail on Australia. "Australia's biggest property markets are still in free fall - with prices in one major city falling by more than 10 per cent in one year. Median house prices fell in every capital city during the March quarter, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed. In Sydney, median house prices dropped by 10.3 per cent to $847,000, making it Australia's worst performing property market."

"Melbourne values plunged by 9.4 per cent in the year to March, with prices sinking to $655,000, as quarterly values fell by 3.8 per cent. The central bank's head of financial stability Jonathan Kearns pointed out the proportion of home borrowers in arrears with their mortgage repayments had risen to the highest level since the global financial crisis a decade ago."

From ABC News. "Developers are offering special deals like paying 12 months of a buyer's mortgage, $50,000 'bonuses' and even furniture vouchers in a bid to help clear Sydney's apartment glut. Property analysts say the deals are common in an over-supplied market such as Sydney, with 54,000 new apartments built in 2018 and 2019 expected to be up for grabs by the end of the year."

"SQM Research chief executive and property analyst Louis Christopher said developers would do anything to avoid reducing the asking price. 'If they do that [reduce the price], it will reduce the valuations on all other properties within that development, and therefore the settlement risk rises accordingly,' he said. 'But buyers should be aware, that they are still paying for it in some form, and it generally comes in the form of over-valuation.'"

"Property analyst Martin North said the real estate sector needed a 'hard dose of reality.' 'Since the election, they've been spruiking like mad,' Mr North said. 'But from the data I'm seeing, investors are not interested in coming on board and the demand is not coming through.'"

"Mr North said although average unit prices have fallen only six per cent, there were pockets of Sydney, such as Hurstville and Ryde, where the falls had been severe. 'In Ryde, unit prices have dropped more than 30 per cent, essentially something that developers can't cover,' he said."

From Perth Now. "Home prices fell in every Australian capital city in the three months to March, slicing more than $170 billion from the total value of the country’s dwellings. The total value of Australia’s 10.3 million residential dwellings fell $172.7 billion between January and the end of March to $6.56 trillion, a heftier decline than the $133 billion lost in the December quarter."

The Canberra Times. "Canberra apartment sellers are slashing their prices across the territory. The data shows sellers of units in the Woden Valley are dropping their prices the most, with an average discount of 6.2 per cent on the original asking price. For the median $440,000 unit in the region, this is would represent a reduction of $27,280 on the initial listing price."

"Units in the region have the steepest discounting rate. Luton Properties Woden manager Anthony McCormack attributed this to supply. 'We're seeing a lot of units in developments, and that's probably what's causing the pricing adjustments there,' he said."

From Reuters. "Investors in Australian mortgage bonds are demanding higher premiums to buy the riskiest tranches of new debt, as a slowing economy stokes concerns a property downturn could get worse and increase home loan defaults."

"'When you are looking at those lower unrated tranches, they are deteriorating as one would expect at the late stage of the [property] cycle,' said George Boubouras, chief investment officer at Atlas Capital. 'We see them as a leading indicator of risk, and they have been getting riskier.'"

"'As there's been more and more discussion around a potential housing bubble and so forth, investors would in the back of the mind be saying, 'maybe I do need to charge a little more for the risk', said David Bailey, chief executive of mortgage broker and RMBS-issuer Australian Finance Group."

"Property analyst Martin North said deals structured at the height of the property boom around 2017 and prior to prudential regulator-imposed changes to lending standards in 2014 were among the most susceptible. 'The debt bomb is still ticking, and even if a crash is delayed, the debt burden has to be dealt with at some time,' said North."