Showing posts with label negative gearing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label negative gearing. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Heavy Gearing


According to the OECD, Australian households remain heavily geared with a high ratio of household debt to disposable income(183.7%), but this has declined from the pre-GFC level of 186.4%.  In 2000, this ratio was 124%.  The OECD average was 98%.  See story here.

Many Australians are prepared to borrow heavily to buy a residence, believing that "rent money is dead money".  But that is not always the situation.  Buying a house or apartment for the short term is often a bad decision.  And if you have to move with your job, as some Qantas engineers found out recently, owning a house can be a liability.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Loss-making Landlords

According to the ATO, there were 1,751,679 property investors declared to the ATO in 2009-10 - representing one in seven taxpayers - an increase of 59,235 from the 2008-09 financial year.

Total losses on investment properties were $4.810 billion in 2009-10, or $2746 per property investor, down from $6.528 billion ($3857 per investor) in 2008-09. Of the 1,751,679 property investors recorded by the ATO in 2009-10, 63% or 1,110,922 were "negatively geared", meaning that holding costs (eg, interest payments, maintenance, and other costs) outweighed income from rents.

Of these negatively geared investors, nearly three-quarters earned less than $80,000 in 2009-10, and the average loss was $9132 per negatively geared investor, or $176 per week.

The concentration of negatively geared properties in lower income and older age cohorts has potentially important ramifications for the Australian housing market. The risk of widespread selling of investment properties is likely to intensify once Australia’s 1.1 million negatively geared investors come to the realisation that there is little prospect of a resumption of past strong rates of capital growth and they are stuck with a loss-making investment.

See Full Story here and report here