Joel Bowman

Hi, Craig.

Thank you for having me.

Yes, it has.

The RBA is cut.

interest rates by 50 basis points this year and it looks like there's more to come as well.

The Sydney housing market, it has historically been the most sensitive to interest rate changes and I think this time is kind of no exception and with the price momentum really picking up during the first half of this year.

Drilling into the segments, I think it's really interesting to see that the houses at the top end of the market have been quite sensitive to those interest rate changes as well.

So we've seen price momentum pick up at the top end of town, but we've also seen those affordability pressures kind of play out and it's increasing a lot of competition for properties at the more affordable end.

And so we've seen prices in some of those cheaper pockets also increase quite materially this year as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I think people are potentially trading off some of those premium kind of locations and looking further afield to see what they can get for their given budget.

And that's a kind of increasing competition in some of those cheaper pockets, which is pushing up prices there.

there.

I think we're also seeing kind of more buyers take advantage of some of the first home buyer schemes as well, which is increasing their kind of capacity to pay to some extent.

The schemes such as the help to buy, and they're also benefiting a lot from those lower interest rates as well.