Sydney Supply/Demand

There are a fair number of investors on the forum who live and work overseas.

These investors can be broken down into multiple types of non-residents:

1. Pure non residents (living and working overseas and not residents of Australia)

2. Expats (Australian Permanent residents or Citizens living and working overseas)

3. Temporary Residents (Visa holders living and working in Australia)

The pure non residents have been affected the most by recent lending changes. Citibank and HSBC and are the only lenders taking non resident applications provided that they are not from China and/or earning Chinese currency. As a result current turnaround times with Citibank are sitting at around 25 days.

Most of these pure non residents are paying cash however the big questions is how will this impact sales in the future?

Currently lenders are imposing a cap of 10% for non-resident sales so the lack of lending in Australia may not be an issue. In addition to this there are some countries that will lend for Australian securities. However as of yesterday Westpac Hong Kong pulled out of lending so this places further pressure on non residents.

Expats have experienced the cross fire from the pull back in non resident lending which is insane as expats are generally very affluent individuals. Most lenders have strict guidelines around the currency (i.e. no Chinese currency accepted), applicants must be PAYG as opposed to self employed, lower LVR of 70% across most lenders (although CBA still maintain an edge at 95%), etc.

The big question will be how this impacts supply particularly in Sydney?

On the other side of the coin is that the NSW government is incredibly cashed up netting $3bil from public buildings and a further $16bil from the partial sale of Ausgrid and as a result they are putting all their infrastructure projects on steroids. I could only assume this would mean an increase in manpower, jobs and thus the temptation from workers from other states and areas in NSW to migrate to Sydney for work.

Now I don’t think values are gong to increase but I do think rental yields are going to chase the extraordinary growth we have had over the past few years.

What does everyone else think?