Soon those who say Australian property will crash can put their money where their mouths are, and short the housing market...
After several years of research and development, Rismark and RP Data, in conjunction with the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), have announced this morning two global firsts in the closely followed housing space:
(1) the launch of the world’s first genuine “daily” house price index suite, which will cover all the major cities and the national market and will be quoted by the ASX as a precursor to the development of exchange-traded products, such as house price index-linked “futures”; and
(2) the launch of house price indices that track the change in the value of the overall asset class (known as the “stock”) rather than simply being limited to the 5% to 6% of all homes that transact each year (called the “flow”).
Based on their new daily hedonic home value index, RP Data-Rismark report that dwelling values across Australia’s eight capital cities rose 0.8% in the month of February, although due to a slump in the seasonally slow month of January year-to-date dwelling values are still soft-to-sideways (-0.2%).
Encouragingly, in the month of February, dwelling values rose 0.8% in Sydney, 1.8% in Melbourne, 1% in Adelaide, 2.2% in Hobart, 5% in Darwin, and 1.9% in Canberra. The only cities to record falls in home values in February were Brisbane (-0.1%) and Perth (-1.8%).
These ASX-quoted daily house price index products should improve the accuracy and timeliness of the information available on Australia’s largest investment class, residential housing, which is valued at $4 trillion in total. They will also offer us the first historical insights into what happens to house prices on an “intra-month” basis.
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