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Housing affordability conditions in Australia dipped for the second straight quarter as house prices were on the rise again, a report released by the Housing Industry Association and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia said Thursday.
Housing affordability slipped 3.3% in the third quarter, but was still 35.7% higher than in the corresponding period of the previous year. Demand for homes grew in the third quarter, on the back of the first home buyers boost, record low interest rates and a better domestic and global economic climate, the HIA said, but warned that the outlook for housing affordability remained bleak.
"Housing remains more affordable in 2009 than it was through most of the rest of the decade," HIA Senior Economist Ben Phillips said. "However, the outlook for affordability is not a good one. Interest rates are on the way up, the first home buyers boost is being wound back, and progress in reducing the structural barriers to increasing new housing supply is slow."
Phillips said the housing construction sector is being hampered by increased regulation, a slow and restricted building approvals process and skilled labor shortages, and added that all these avoidable factors will have an adverse impact on housing affordability unless rectified soon.
"If we don't succeed in significantly lifting the level of new home building over the next few years then there is a very real risk that we will return to the woeful affordability levels of 2007 and 2008," Phillips cautioned.
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