Foreign cash fuelling apartment ‘bubble’
A major bank has labelled Melbourne’s inner-city apartment market a “bubble” that is being partly inflated by cashed-up foreign buyers.
Speaking at the Bloomberg Summit, CBA chief financial officer David Craig said foreign investors are having a clear impact on certain housing markets.
“At the fringe in some aspects of the market, for example inner-city apartments in Melbourne, it is clear that there has been a fairly high percentage of foreign investors that are probably contributing a little bit to the bubble in that particular market,” he said.
“So it is a matter, from our point of view, of just being conscious of the type of investors and the impact they are having on different parts of the market.”
The latest NAB Residential Property Survey found that foreign buyers accounted for 15.7 per cent of new property demand in the third quarter – up from 12.8 per cent in the previous quarter.
In Victoria, foreign buyers accounted for 25.2 per cent of new property transactions.
By comparison, foreign buyers accounted for 17.7 per cent of new property transactions in Queensland, 13.6 per cent in NSW and 8.3 per cent in Western Australia.
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