interest rate

[eddie&tina]

one for you guys in oz.
Here, Northern rock bank seems to have gone tits up. The Bank of England is steadying the ship to stop everyone from panicking, and i've just seen on the news tonight that america has dropped their interest rate by 0.5%. Usually if America has problems then usually it affects many other countries. My question is that i'm trying to get a general feel on how the housing market/money market is doing in oz at the mo. How is the mood? Are people talking positively/negatively? Would be very interested in your replies.

eddie,tina

[TheBrammies]

australia has a booming economy higher interest rates than here house prices are generaly rising not affected as much as us by america Northern Rock isn't going tits up the press as misled the public it has more cash than peoples deposits there problem is they can't lend money off the international for future lending requirements which will affect there future prifits and growth they are about to record £500+million profit the shareprice has took abeating because of the frenzy of people taking there money out which could make the brand worthless for future growth but i think loyalty will kick in and the share price will recover there profits come mainly from mortgages not savers and it is this that will save them maybe a takeover target but definatley won't go bust.
Australia is stable and doing well

[graham]

Feed into Google the following: prices fall but no joy for renters and click the pages from Australia button, the third listing is the SMH giving an interesting graph with rental market properties going through the roof in Sydney but showing a drop of 1.4% on property sale prices. I think in Perth which is booming the story could be different. The Brammies are right about Northern Rock they were making use of borrowing from other banks to finance their customers mortgages with just a small
part of their mortgage financing from their savers, all the banks stopped lending to each other in case they got caught out by some of the U.S. financial companies in Aug so Northern Rocks source of funds dried up, they are still getting vast sums of money in each month from their mortgage customers and the government knows this and is backing them, they have yet to draw down on the goverment loan, however I doubt if they will be offering many new mortgages for a while!
Also... feed: Australian growth beats forecasts into BBC news web.... makes some good reading

[Liam]

The Australian Real Estate and Money Markets are different in stages in each state at the moment so hard to make a general comment as some areas down 10% and sum up 40%. Have a look at the following report:

www.macquarie.com.au/remo/

This gives an in depth view of the market countrywide.

regards

Liam