The Reserve Bank of Australia has cut interest rates by 50 basis points in an unexpected move that should provide welcome relief to many homeowners.

The reduction takes the official cash rate to 3.75 percent.

Damian Smith CEO of financial comparison site RateCity called the RBA’s decision "a very big move".

"They haven’t moved rates this far since the depths of the Global Financial Crisis," Mr Smith told ninemsn.

"This cut will help thousands of households, with people on a $300,000 mortgage potentially saving around $1000 per year."

But he warns that some banks may be unwilling to pass on the rate cut in full.

"It’s unlikely that all lenders will pass on the full rate cut," Mr Smith said.

"The signals from the big four banks suggest that they will try to hold on to part of this rate cut."

Mr Smith points out that while the central bank has lowered the cash rate by 50 basis points since November, "the big four banks have only passed on around 40 basis points to variable rate home loan customers".

It is the largest cut to the cash rate since a 100 basis point reduction in February 2009, and the first time the RBA has lowered the cash rate since it cut it by 25 basis points at its December board meeting.

Business lobby groups, trade unionists and some economists had called for the board of the RBA to cut rates by 50 basis points to help ailing retailers, manufacturers and the stubborn housing market.

Story source: www.ninemsn.com.au

Social media and search advertising are projected to be the most popular advertising tools this year, each cited by 24% of respondents to a PointRoll survey [pdf] of US marketing professionals, conducted by Kelton Research and released in March 2012. Display advertising followed closely, chosen by 22% of respondents. There was then a significant drop-off to online video (11%), mobile or tablet ads (7%), and mobile or tablet apps (6%). Just 1% chose email, text/SMS, or social gaming. Search advertising is more popular among respondents at director level or above, compared to those in supervisory or managerial positions (30% vs. 19%).

Most Will Increase Spend on Digital Channels

In fact, a majority of respondents are planning to up their spend on a variety of digital channels, a position that traditional channels are not slated to share. Among digital channels, the largest proportion say they will increase their spending on social media marketing or ads (79%), closely followed by those who will increase their budgets for mobile marketing or ads (75%). A comparatively fewer 55% say they will increase spending on search advertising, though this compares favorably to just 7% who will either decrease spending (3%) or not use this tool (4%).

Conversely, out-of-home marketing or ads will get an increase from just 16% of marketing professionals, on par with the proportion who will decrease spending in this area. And while 15% will budget more for traditional marketing or ads, 21% will scale back their budgets. Even so, traditional marketing channels still get a big chunk of budgets: 57% of marketing and advertising executives in organizations with revenues of $10 million or more said that most of their spending in 2011 went to traditional efforts.

Audience Targeting Proves Exciting

Meanwhile, audience targeting (49%) tops the list of industry trends that respondents are excited about, ahead of other movements including cross-screen media (40%), web TV (30%), Facebook marketing (37%), social gaming (22%) and digital out-of-home marketing or ads (19%). Excitement about audience targeting is higher at the directorial level and above than at the supervisory or managerial level (56% vs. 44%).

Some of that excitement may be related to necessity: 17% of respondents said that identifying the right audience has been holding them back from doing their job more successfully. According to March 2012 survey results from Acxiom and Loyalty 360, just 49% of company executives agree that they know who their most loyal customers are, and the best way to reach out to them and get them to engage with their brand. In fact, just 10% of respondents strongly agreed with the statement, while about one-third were neutral and roughly 1 in 5 disagreed.

Marketers Using Numerous Tools and Partners

Data from PointRoll’s “Marketing Tools Study 2012? indicates that 28% of marketing and advertising professionals use at least 7 tools during a single campaign to reach their target market, while 62% use between 3 and 6 tools. To help with their efforts, roughly 3 in 10 respondents call on at least 10 partners to help them during a campaign. Even so, this sometimes has the opposite effect than intended: about one-third say that managing multiple vendors typically prevents them from doing their job better, and 1 in 10 say that working more efficiently with vendors is their biggest goal this year.

Other Findings:

• Marketing professionals would pay a company an average of $107,500 to manage an integrated digital campaign.
• Increasing sales (31%) and ROI (28%) are the goals most commonly cited as marketers’ most important for this year.
• Slightly more than half of respondents say that inefficient ROI tracking and measurement has hindered their success at work.
• Almost all respondents predict they will use online video this year. The most popular formats are in-banner (60%), in-stream (49%) and dynamic or customized video ads (42%).
• Roughly 2 in 5 respondents believe that they are behind the curve when it comes to digital marketing.

About the Data: The PointRoll data is based on a survey of more than 250 marketing professionals from across the US at supervisor level and above, conducted in January 2012.

Story source: www.mikeandrewconsulting.com/blog

The board of the Reserve Bank of Australia has left the official cash rate at 4.25 percent for the second month in a row.

The move was widely expected with inflation at the bottom of the RBA’s target band of 2-3 percent and global economic conditions improving.

However, the news may not be met with the rapturous receptions of the past with many lenders now lifting their rates independently of the RBA.

"The rates that borrowers pay have been creeping away from the Reserve Bank’s cash rate movements since the global financial crisis," RateCity CEO Damian Smith said.

"Last month proves that all variable rate mortgage holders are vulnerable to rate hikes, regardless of what the RBA does."

The central bank left rates on hold last month but that didn’t stop the big four, ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac from lifting their standard variable mortgage rates between 0.06 and 0.10 percent.

Westpac-owned St George went even further by hiking their rates by 0.12 percent.

The RBA was expected to ease rates last month but shocked observers when it left the rate unchanged, citing the resilient domestic economy and improved global outlook.

The decision not to move rates suggested the RBA had confidence in the local economy, buoyed by low unemployment and continued demand for labour.

However, the new dynamic the banks have set up by raising rates independently of the RBA mean borrowers could be hit by a rate rise at any time.

"Borrowers should expect frequent small changes in rates, perhaps as often as every month," Mr Smith said.

Source: www.ninemsn.com.au

Google has been accused of bypassing the privacy settings of users of the Safari web-browser.

The Wall Street Journal said Google and other companies had worked around privacy settings designed to restrict cookies.

Cookies are small text files stored by browsers which can record information about online activity, and help some online services work.

However Google says the story "mischaracterises" what happened.

Advertisers can use cookies to track online behaviour, helping them to target the commercials they show to internet users.

Some think this use of cookies erodes online privacy. In May, European Union laws are due to come into force which will restrict the use of advertising cookies.

But cookies are also essential to some web services like those Google offers.

Cookie control

The Safari browser is produced by Apple, and is the browser used by the iPhone.

By default Safari only allows cookies to be stored by the web page a user is visiting, not from third parties such as advertisers.

However, Stanford University researcher Jonathan Mayer found that advertisers were still able to store cookies on the computers of internet users browsing with Safari.

It was his discovery that formed the basis of the Wall Street Journal’s story.

Many Google services use cookies, for example to remember when someone is signed in to a service, but they are also used by the firm to help personalise advertising.

It was when Google attempted to find a way to enable some of its services and personalised advertising to work on Safari that, Google says, it inadvertently stored cookies.

Side-stepping Safari

In a statement, senior vice president Rachel Whetstone said that last year the company had decided to "enable features for signed-in Google users on Safari who had opted to see personalised ads and other content".

She added: "To enable these features, we created a temporary communication link between Safari browsers and Google’s servers, so that we could ascertain whether Safari users were also signed into Google, and had opted for this type of personalisation."

Ms Whetsone said the company had created new systems to make sure the information it collected was anonymous, but this had led to unintended consequences:

"The Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser.

"We didn’t anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers. It’s important to stress that, just as on other browsers, these advertising cookies do not collect personal information."

The Wall Street Journal reported that Google "disabled the code after being contacted by the paper".

Google declined to provide further comment to the BBC.

Privacy warning

Online privacy advocates were highly critical of Google’s actions.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote: "It’s time for Google to acknowledge that it can do a better job of respecting the privacy of web users."

Although much of the criticism has been directed at the search giant, the Wall Street Journal said that in addition to Google, a number of advertising companies had been using the work-around which had been known about for some time.

An Apple spokesman said in a statement: "We are aware that some third parties are circumventing Safari’s privacy features and we are working to put a stop to it."

Story source: www.bbc.co.uk

Although roughly 3 in 4 SMBs use email marketing tactics such as organic list growth and web-based sign-up forms to generate leads, just 41% include a sign-up form on their Facebook fan pages, according to a survey released in February 2012 by GetResponse. And while a majority optimize their newsletters with clear, recognizable, branded from field names and addresses, less than half include social sharing icons in their newsletters.
SMBs appear to be behind the curve in this regard: according to a survey released in February 2012 by Econsultancy, in partnership with the Email Experience Council of the DMA, 69% of US organizations are including social sharing icons in their emails, while a further 13% have a plan in place to do so.

Segmentation Also Not Widespread

Data from GetResponse’s “The State of Email Marketing in SMBs” indicates that only 42% of the SMBs surveyed segment their lists based on either subscriber personal data or subscriber actions, such as opens and clicks. List hygiene is poor, too: just 38% report removing inactive contacts, and only 36% try to re-engage them through re-activation campaigns. SMBs also seem to be ignoring the risks posed by bad addresses: only 53% use mailing systems that automatically process soft and hard bounces and take appropriate actions to the addresses.

Legal Compliance Better, Though

72% of respondents indicate that they use a confirmed opt-in email model, and 71% provide unsubscribe links in their emails. Overall, the marketers surveyed cited an average deliverability rate of about 97%, with the vast majority reporting no problems with delivery to most major client inboxes.

Largest SMBs Not as Socially Integrated

SMBs with more than 500 employees tended to report higher adoption of various list building and sign-up form optimization strategies, such as using sign-up forms to grow lists, collecting contacts offline using paper sign-up forms, and telling subscribers specifically what they will receive. However, these larger companies were far less likely than companies with 11-250 employees to run a Facebook page with a newsletter sign-up form (57% vs. 82%), indicating that they may be underestimating the power of social media integration. Similarly, they were less likely than companies with 11-250 employees or 251-500 employees to use social sharing icons.

Other Findings:

• Most SMBs have adopted measures such as regular mailings (70%), personalization (58%), compelling subject line (68%), and stats analysis (61%).
• 69% of respondents indicated that they have a complaint ratio below 0.2%.

For more on email and social integration, visit MarketingVox.

About the Data: The GetResponse data was collected from November 14-28, 2011 from approximately 600 respondents classified in 4 groups based on the business unit size.

The Reserve Bank of Australia board has kept interest rates on hold, leaving the official cash rate at 4.25 percent.

The shock move comes as many parts of the economy continue to struggle with the side effects of the mining boom.

Data published yesterday showed retail trade contracted 0.1 percent in December, traditionally the sector’s strongest month.

In anticipation of a rate cut, the Prime Minister and Treasurer earlier urged banks to pass on the cut in full.

But the board’s decision means mortgage holders and borrowers will have to wait another month in hope of further interest rate relief.

The CEO of mortgage comparison company RateCity, Damian Smith, told ninemsn the surprise announcement does not spell impending doom for mortgagees.

"Borrowers shouldn’t be disheartened that the Reserve Bank kept the cash rate at 4.25 percent today because the sluggish home loans market means the ball is in your court," Mr Smith said.

"We’re seeing lenders offering discounts of up to one percent off their standard variable rates for basic home loans and many lenders — including the big four banks — have said they are willing to negotiate to retain their share of the home loan market."

The Australian dollar rose sharply immediately after the news, up more than 0.7 of a US cent.

At 1432 (AEDT), the currency was at 107.79 US cents, compared with 107.06 US cents just before the RBA announced its decision at 1430 (AEST) today.

Source: www.ninemsn.com.au

The preliminary capital city dwelling value index result for December was -0.2% (s.a.) following an upwardly revised +0.4% rise in dwelling values in November (was +0.1%). Revised regional house values for November increased from +0.3% to +0.5%. Sydney housing has been the nation’s best performer with dwelling values up 0.4% in December and by 0.7% over the quarter (s.a.).

In the generally seasonally weak month of December, the preliminary RP Data-Rismark Home Value Index result for capital city dwelling values was -0.2 per cent (s.a.). Low sales volumes in December mean that this number will likely see a more significant revision than normal.

The November result from the RP Data-Rismark index for dwellings in capital cities has revised up from +0.1 per cent (s.a.) to +0.4 per cent (s.a.) based on additional sales information. This marks the largest month-on-month improvement in Australian home values since May 2010.

The RP Data-Rismark ‘rest-of-state’ index, which covers Australia’s regional markets, has also revised up in November from +0.3 per cent to +0.5 per cent (s.a.). This is the most significant increase in regional house values since November 2010.

Over the December quarter, Australia’s capital city home values declined by -0.5 per cent (s.a.).

RP Data’s director of research Tim Lawless, said, “The December quarter was the year’s smallest quarterly decline. According to our index, capital city home values fell by -1.5 per cent (s.a.) in the March quarter, and by a further -0.8 per cent (s.a.) in each of the June and September quarters. This rate of decline had decelerated to -0.5% by the final quarter of 2011.”

In 2011, Australian capital city dwelling values experienced a capital loss of about three and a half per cent. Regional house values fared a little better, correcting by around three per cent. This compared to the 14-15 per cent decline in Australian shares. Adding in rents, the gross total return to Australian property investors was slightly less than one per cent over 2011.

Rismark’s managing director Ben Skilbeck said, “The month of December is characterised by a significant lull in activity and the preliminary index results have likely been influenced by some more volatile Melbourne and Perth estimates. We expect to get better clarity on the monthly movements as more information is reported.”

“Sydney currently has the largest volume of reported sales in December. In seasonally-adjusted terms, Sydney dwelling values rose by 0.4 per cent in the month of December. In the December quarter, Sydney dwelling values are up a total of 0.7 per cent (s.a.)” Mr Skilbeck said.

RP Data’s Tim Lawless observed that rental markets continued to strengthen in December.

“Weekly rents across the capital cities were up 1.0 per cent over the December quarter and are now 6.3 per cent higher than at the same time last year.”

“These higher rental rates combined with the slide in property values have improved investors’ yields. The average capital city dwelling is now offering a gross rental return of 4.6 per cent after a consistent trend upwards since mid-2010 when the typical capital city dwelling was yielding just 4.1 per cent. Darwin and Canberra are the highest yielding locations for property investors while Hobart, Brisbane, and Sydney provide gross yields that are better than average,” Mr Lawless said.

On the outlook for the year ahead, Rismark’s Ben Skilbeck commented, “We expect that the RBA’s interest rate cuts in the final two months of 2011 will lend further momentum to housing activity as transaction volumes pick up over February and March after the seasonally slow months of December and January. If financial market pricing for substantial additional RBA rate cuts proves accurate, we could see a stronger-than-expected bounce-back in housing conditions.”

“Housing affordability in Australia has experienced a striking improvement in recent times. While disposable household incomes on a per household basis rose by five per cent over the year to September 2011, Australian dwelling values have declined by 3.4 per cent since September 2010. As a result of the RBA’s rate cuts borrowers can now get fixed- and variable-rate home loans as low as 5.9 per cent and 6.14 per cent. Rismark’s research shows that disposable incomes per household have risen about 15 per cent further than Australian dwelling values since the end of 2003. This helps account for the decline in Rismark’s national dwelling price-to-income ratio, which is as low as its been since 2003” Mr Skilbeck said.

RP Data’s Tim Lawless added, “While global uncertainty and a stagnant local labour market could weigh on the consumer’s mindset, we are nevertheless observing improvements in monthly housing finance commitments. RP Data’s leading indicators on average selling times and vendor discounts are also starting to look healthier. There is no doubt that additional interest rate relief in 2012 would afford a very welcome cushion to the housing market.”

Five days before a critical vote, US senators are abandoning an anti-piracy bill after an outpouring of online opposition to tinkering with internet freedoms.

Senate Democratic leaders still plan to vote on Tuesday on taking up the Protect International Property Act and supporters are scrambling to make changes before then to answer some of the critics, but it is questionable whether they have the 60 votes needed.

Half-a-dozen of the 40 original co-sponsors of what is known as the PIPA bill withdrew their support on Wednesday amid a one-day protest blackout by Wikipedia and other web giants and a flood of emails to Capitol Hill offices that at times doubled normal volumes.

More than 7 million signed a petition on Google saying the Senate bill and its counterpart in the House would censor the web and impose burdensome regulations on US businesses.

"The overwhelming input I’ve received from New Hampshire citizens makes it clear there are many legitimate concerns that deserve further consideration before Congress moves forward with this legislation," said Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte, one of the politicians who pulled back her support of the bill.

Others included Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah, Marco Rubio of Florida, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Roy Blunt of Missouri and John Boozman of Arkansas.

Nearly all cited the earful they were getting from constituents.

"I can say, with all honesty, that the feedback I received from Arkansans has been overwhelmingly in opposition to the Senate bill in its current form," Boozman said.

Several Democratic co-sponsors also now say they oppose the bill as it is written.

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has resisted suggestions he put off the Tuesday vote.

Reid and the bill’s main sponsor, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said it was too important to delay action on legislation aimed at combating the billions of dollars US content creators and companies lose to foreign copyright violators and counterfeiters every year.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on Thursday urged Democrats to shelve the bill for now, saying serious issues with the measure should be resolved before "prematurely" bringing it to the floor.

The Senate bill, and the parallel Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would allow the Justice Department and copyright holders to seek court orders against foreign websites that steal from American content creators.

It would bar advertising networks and payment facilitators such as credit card companies from doing business with the offending websites.

The bills have the strong support of the entertainment industry which loses billions every year to foreign copyright violators and from industries such as pharmaceuticals battling fake and sometimes harmful alternatives sold on the internet.

The opposition, as demonstrated by Wednesday’s protest, is led by internet-related industries that say the bills will lead to censorship of the internet and a surge in lawsuits that will discourage budding internet entrepreneurs.

Story source: www.ninemsn.com.au

In case you missed all the news on the proposed bill to Stop On Line Piracy, or SOPA as it has become known, is a bill that was introduced into the  US house of representatives in October last year. 

The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.^[2] Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.

In an update of this story, below is a article from the Los Angeles Times:

“Three co-sponsors of the SOPA and PIPA antipiracy bills have publicly withdrawn their support as Wikipedia and thousands of other websites blacked out their pages Wednesday to protest the legislation.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) withdrew as a co-sponsor of the Protect IP Act in the Senate, while Reps. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) said they were pulling their names from the companion House bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act. Opponents of the legislation, led by large Internet companies, say its broad definitions could lead to censorship of online content and force some websites to shut down.

In a posting on his Facebook page, Rubio noted that after the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed its bill last year, he has "heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government’s power to impact the Internet."

"Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences," Rubio said in announcing he was withdrawing his support. While he’s committed to stopping online piracy, Rubio called for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to back off plans to hold a key procedural vote on the bill on Tuesday.

Rubio’s withdrawal will reduce the number of co-sponsors to 39. Last week, two other co-sponsors, Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), joined four other Senate Republicans in a letter to Reid also urging him delay the vote. But Grassley and Hatch have not withdrawn their support.

Terry and Quayle were among the 31 sponsors of the House legislation before they withdrew their support Tuesday.

Quayle still strongly supports the goal of the House bill to crack down on foreign websites that traffic in pirated movies, music, medicine and other goods.

"The bill could have some unintended consequences that need to be addressed," said Quayle spokesman Zach Howell. "Basically it needs more work before he can support it."

Terry said that he also had problems with the House bill in its current form and would no longer support it.

Wikipedia, Reddit and about 10,000 other websites blacked out their pages Wednesday with messages warning of the dangers of the legislation and urging people to contact their congressional representatives. Howell said Quayle’s office had not seen a major increase in calls or emails Wednesday, but that the piracy bills have been the main issue in recent weeks for people contacting the office.

There has been a "manageable increase" in visits to House member websites Wednesday, said Dan Weiser, a spokesman for the House office of the chief administrative officer.

"It’s possible some users will see a short delay or slow loading of a member’s web page," he said.”

Original story from The Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/

If you would like to read more on how this bill, if passed, would affect how you use and research on the Internet, please read this link to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act.

Anything we can do to stop this bill becoming law, lets do it now, and protest what is essentially an act of total censorship.

AUSTRALIAN housing markets displayed a generally resilient performance in 2011, reflecting the inherent security of residential real estate in this country, particularly when compared with housing markets in similar open-market economies.

The year was always set to be a period of correction for Australia’s housing markets following the unsustainable growth in house prices recorded through 2009 and 2010.

Between January 2009 and June 2010, Melbourne’s quarterly median house price rose by nearly 30 per cent, with Sydney’s up by almost 20 per cent over the same period. All other capitals also recorded big rises in house prices over those 18 months.

Housing affordability crashed by the end of 2010, with surging house prices and rising interest rates combining to send buyers into hibernation.

Australian Property Monitors data has revealed that capital city housing markets have generally performed encouragingly in 2011 despite the pressure on housing affordability generated in 2010 and a mixed economic performance in 2011.

The national median price for houses over the year to October 2011 fell by just 1 per cent compared with the previous year, with median unit prices rising by 1.2 per cent over the year. The 2011 result follows a 17 per cent rise in the national median house price over the year to October 2010 and a 12.2 per cent rise in the median unit price over the same period.

The best capital city performers were Melbourne and Sydney, where annual median house prices rose by 1 per cent. Darwin and Adelaide house prices were flat and Hobart down 1.5 per cent.

The worst performers over the year were Brisbane and Perth, where annual median house prices fell by 3.5 and 4.75 per cent respectively.

The unit market clearly outperformed the housing market over the year to October 2011, with Sydney recording median unit price growth of 2 per cent followed by Melbourne and Darwin up by 1 per cent. Brisbane and Perth were again the underperformers, with annual unit prices falling by 1.3 per cent and 3.5 per cent respectively.

Bureau of Statistics data confirms the solid performance by Australian housing markets in 2011, with the number of owner-occupier housing loans rising by 2.4 per cent over the 10 months ending October compared with the same period in 2010.

New South Wales was the best performer with an increase of 8 per cent, with Western Australia surprisingly in second place with growth in home loans of 7 per cent over the year, courtesy of a surge in the past three months – indicating perhaps growing late-year momentum in that market.

By contrast, the number of home loans approved in Queensland in the year to October fell by 8.4 per cent compared with the same period in 2010.

The nature and strength of Australian housing markets in 2011 was always to be determined by the underlying supply and demand characteristics of individual markets and the strength of national and local economies.

In addition to the affordability barriers created by the prices surge and interest rate rises of 2009 and 2010, housing markets have had to encounter unexpected headwinds in 2011. The impact of the central Queensland and Brisbane floods was not restricted to the local housing markets. National economic output was affected through reduced coal exports and the cost of the reconstruction levy. Higher prices for fruit and vegetables also affected household budgets nationally.

The impact of catastrophic natural disasters on the national psyche and confidence cannot be underestimated, particularly given Australia’s recent propensity for financial conservatism, especially when it comes to buying or borrowing.

The Japanese earthquake and associated tsunami in March also contributed to lower economic growth and reduced consumer confidence.

Stalling economic growth in 2011 was also a product of continued mixed performances by various industry sectors, particularly retail, manufacturing, tourism and construction. As a consequence, all capitals recorded rises in unemployment through mid-year. All these factors combined to subdue consumer capacity and confidence and consequently dampen home buying activity through 2011.

Most Australian capital city housing markets are, however, set to record growth in median prices over 2012 as the national economy gathers strength. The Australian economy is primed to expand strongly on the back of a significant resources boom with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development predicting gross domestic product will increase by 4 per cent over the year.

Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart will be the underperformers in 2012, with median house price growth of between zero and 5 per cent.

Melbourne’s balanced housing supply and demand mix offers buyers a wide choice and it remains the most tenant-friendly capital city rental market. Affordability barriers, however, remain for home buyers.

With the Victorian economy showing signs of running out of puff, particularly as the recent construction boom abates, the housing market is set to drift sideways though 2012. The possibility remains of some growth in median house prices by the end of 2012 as the impact of a strong national economy filters through.

Dr Andrew Wilson is senior economist for Australian Property Monitors.

Source: BusinessDay

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