Popping a housing bubble fantasy

As we mentioned earlier, imposing that logic on the Australian government bond market would imply that it is in the throes of an enormous bubble since yields are more than a third lower than their 30-year average.

To really understand what is going on here one needs to examine the time path of three economic variables: inflation; interest rates; and rental yields.

As you can see from the chart above, Australian inflation has steadily declined from its high and volatile double digit levels in the 1980s to sit within the RBA's 2 to 3 per cent per annum target band during most of the past two decades. This has allowed the central bank to in turn reduce interest rates.

In the RBA’s view, the long-term reduction in inflation has mainly been a function of the early 1990s recession and its adoption of what is known as an ‘inflation target’. The RBA’s 2 to 3 per cent target was first taken up in about 1993, and more formally enshrined in an agreement between the RBA and the Treasurer in 1996.

Between 1982 and 1995, mortgage rates in Australia averaged 12.8 per cent. Since the start of 1996, they have averaged 7.3 per cent (or 43 per cent less). The RBA considers today’s mortgage rate of 7.8 per cent to be slightly “above” its historical average because the RBA believes that the history that is relevant to today starts with the application of the inflation targeting approach to monetary policy in the early 1990s. Yet we don’t hear The Economist claiming that Australian mortgage rates are too low. (In fact, Australian mortgage rates are today amongst the highest in the developed world.)

The RBA has regularly argued that the structural decline in inflation, and the resultant downward shift in nominal interest rates, in turn drove a once-off upward shift in household’s borrowing (and purchasing) power. This has been reflected in the once-off jump in household debt levels, which basically occurred between 1996 and 2003. This marked rise in household borrowing power also boosted their purchasing power and hence the value of readily leveraged assets, such as houses.

In the following chart, we track the change in Australian mortgage rates and rental yields since 1982. The message is clear: the secular decline in nominal interest rates has propagated a corresponding fall in yields.

Our final chart tells the same story by comparing Australia’s dwelling price-to-disposable household income ratio (bottom line) with Australia’s rent-to-dwelling price ratio (top line) over the last two decades. Observe how these ratios look like mirror images of each other. The common driver has been inflation and interest rates.

The RBA believes that as interest rates started to stabilise at their new, much lower levels in the late 1990s, and households got comfortable with the idea that both rates and inflation were unlikely to jump back to the double digit levels of the 1980s, there was a consequential upward increase in the valuation 'level' of housing assets. This had been fully priced by the early 2000s, which is why the two ratios track sideways thereafter.

To be clear, the RBA's ability to get inflation under control (and thus cut the long-term level of nominal interest rates) caused increases in the household debt-to-income, household debt-to-GDP, house price-to-income, and house price-to-rent ratios. In the jargon, these were 'level effects' rather than 'growth effects'. This means that the very rapid double digit credit growth of the 1990s and early 2000s will not be repeated anytime soon.