I still can’t get my head around this puzzle…

Where did all the rental properties go?

Have you seen them? I’m sure I put them down on the kitchen bench a minute ago, I’ve checked behind the couch… I just can’t find them anywhere.

Seriously though, what happened to them?

Prior to Covid, there was a pretty consistent 75,000 to 80,000 rental properties available to rent on the market at any one time.

Today, there’s less than 40,000.

That is, the number of rental properties on the market has halved.

That’s insane.

And as a result, the vacancy rate has fallen from an already pretty tight 2 to 2.5% down to under 1%.

That’s also insane.

But with the collapse in rentals and vacancy rates, we’ve got the makings of a rental crisis:

Australia’s rental crisis deepened through May as national vacancy rates fell from 1.1 per cent to 1 per cent, the lowest level in 16 years, and there is every chance they will fall again during June, SQM Research shows.

“Rental vacancy rates continued to tighten across the country and there is nothing yet in the data to suggest a reprieve,” said SQM managing director Louis Christopher.

Australia’s national rental vacancy rate has hit 1pc, the lowest it has been since 2006. Peter Rae

“The national rental crisis continues on unabated and as a result rents are skyrocketing.

“Sydney combined rents have risen by 17.5 per cent over the past 12 months, Brisbane is up by 18.6 per cent over the same period and Melbourne is up 14.8 per cent.”

Average capital city weekly rents in Australia are now $654 a week for houses and $473 for units.

Most concerning for prospective renters is that SQM’s report showed housing availability is worse in many markets than the headline figures indicate with rental vacancy rates well below 1 per cent in every city except for Sydney and Melbourne.

In Adelaide, rental vacancy rates are now 0.3 per cent, followed by Hobart (0.4 per cent), Darwin (0.5 per cent), Perth (0.6 per cent) and Brisbane (0.7 per cent).

Melbourne has the highest vacancy rate of all capital cities at 1.7 per cent, down from 1.9 per cent, while Sydney vacancies fell to 1.5 per cent.

Mr Christopher said it appears inevitable listings will tighten further and fall below 1 per cent before the cycle scrapes the bottom.

“We could break 1 per cent even as early as June – it’s possible,” he said.

“If not June, then the probabilities increase it will be in July because in all of this, we’re seeing nothing right now to suggest that we’re about to see a rise in rental listings – there’s just nothing there.”

I still don’t really get this.

Yes, maybe people spread themselves out more during Covid, so we needed more housing for the same amount of population.

But Covid is quickly becoming yesterday’s news.

Feels like there must be something else going on here.

But what?

JG.

Is it a global crash. Or can we just blame Elon?

I try not follow what Elon Musk is up to too closely, but this story did get me wondering.

Basically, he’s canning work-from-home at Tesla:

In a memo headlined “Remote work is no longer acceptble” [sic], Musk wrote that “anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers.”

In a reply to a Twitter follower asking for “additional comment to people who think coming into work is an antiquated concept”, Musk wrote: “They should pretend to work somewhere else.”

About 30% of US office workers are still working from home, according to Nick Bloom, a Stanford economics professor and co-founder of Working from Home Research Project.

It struck me as odd.

First, for a company that has literally built its fortunes on being all about ‘the future’, these seems pretty backward looking.

Second, the jobs market in America is still incredibly strong. The unemployment rate last week came in a just 3.6%.

Given we know that pretty much every worker wants at least some flexibility in their work life, and that tech workers are particularly fussy about this, it seems like a guaranteed way to have some of your best people walk off the job.

But then maybe that’s what Musk wants. Because we also learnt last week that he’s freezing hiring and reducing headcount by about 10%.

The leak came from an internal email sent to Tesla executives on Thursday, titled “pause all hiring worldwide”.

The world’s richest person has decided to cut 10 per cent of Tesla’s 100,000-strong workforce, apparently telling top executives at the company he has a “super bad feeling” about how the economy is tracking.

Yikes! Musk has a feeling? Oh no.

But what does that feeling tell you? Is it about the American and global economy in general, or about Tesla specifically?

Because Tesla has been struggling. It’s share price is down over 40% since the start of the year, as it fails to make inroads into China.

But while Tesla is cutting staff, other auto-makers are hiring, as President Biden was keen to point out:

US President Joe Biden shot back Friday at Mr Musk's comments about the US economy, rattling off a number of American companies who are growing.

“While Elon Musk is talking about that, Ford is increasing their investment overwhelmingly and I think Ford is increasing the investment in building new electric vehicles, 6,000 new employees — union employees I might add — in the Midwest,” Mr Biden responded.

“The former Chrysler Corporation, Stellantis, they're also making similar investments in electric vehicles. Intel's adding 20,000 new jobs making computer chips,” he added.

“So, you know, lots of luck on his trip to the moon,” Mr Biden said.

Lol. Imagine getting trolled by the POTUS. No wonder Musk feels like he’s the central character in his own comic book.

So look, the thing I take from this is that there’s a lot of doom and gloom out there. Tesla seems to typify it.

But a lot of the doom and gloom is company and bubble specific. Tech stocks like Tesla got massively over-bought as retail investors piled their government handouts to anything that sounded sexy and was run by somebody with a nice hair cut.

But the party couldn’t last.

But just because the balloons are popping on Elon Musk’s ballroom, doesn’t mean that things are going to be rough for the rest of us.

I think we’ll be ok.

JG.

Has the RBA gone crazy? Or is that just what they want us to think?

Well, who saw that coming? 50bps. RBA served up a double-scoop of rate hikes. Throw a little cherry on top why don’t you?

If you didn’t see it coming, don’t worry. Nobody did. When they hiked the cash rate by 50bps up to (a still incredibly low) 0.85% literally nobody in the markets saw it coming.)

And you get the sense that that was kind of the point.

BetaShares chief economist David Bassanese called Tuesday’s move as a decision by the RBA to “inflict shock and awe” on the economy, “no doubt with a view to eliminating any lingering complacency with regard to the inflation outlook”.

“The RBA clearly wants to avoid falling behind the inflation curve and has judged the economy has sufficient underlying resilience and momentum to withstand today’s shock move.”

And this is the thing to remember. Expectations matter. If people expect rates to be higher tomorrow, they start adjusting their spending and investment decisions today.

And that creates an alluring fruit dangling in front of the RBA’s nose. If they can shock and awe everyone in the economy, and everyone then ratchets back their spending in anticipation of higher rates, then they don’t actually have to raise rates at all.

The expectation of higher rates does most of the heavy lifting.

And so we get 50bps last week, and we might we get 50bps next month as well.

At that point, everyone adjusts their expectations and assumes that the RBA had decided to go hard.

But those expectations in and of themselves change the course of the economy. As a result, the RBA then has the luxury of sitting on its hands and watching how things play out.

Smart.

And so what I reckon that means is that a bigger than expected rate hike now actually means the opposite of what most people think it means.

Most people think it means that the RBA has become more aggressive, and we’re going to see more rate hikes than we previously thought.

It could actually be the opposite.

It could be that the RBA has decided to front load all of their hikes in a hope of shocking people. And they’re doing this because they know they don’t really want to raise rates too far.

And so, kinda oddly, bigger hikes now might mean less hikes in the future.

That’d be my guess.

That said, that might be giving the RBA too much credit.

It might equally be the case that they just don’t really know what they’re doing right now because these are such uncertain times.

We’ve never had a massive energy shock coming straight out of a pandemic before. There’s no procedure manual for that one.

So, is the RBA clever or crazy?

We’ll have to see.

JG.

The numbers look good. So why aren’t we more excited?

We got March quarter GDP data, and unless I’m missing something, they actually look pretty good.

GDP was up 0.8% in the quarter and by 3.3% over the year, easily besting economists’ expectations for a 3% growth rate.

But despite the solid headline numbers, incoming Treasurer Jim Chalmers wasn’t putting any lipstick on the pig:

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has reset the economic narrative, labelling a solid quarterly economic growth figure and booming national income as “weaker than expected” and warning of “big challenges” ahead for the economy.

Economists variously labelled the result “very strong”, “strong”, “solid” and “firm”, but Dr Chalmers used his first national accounts press conference to describe the result as “weaker” than the budget forecasts and “a snapshot of the really serious constraints and challenges that we have in our economy”.

Although he acknowledged that parts of the economy were “robust” and “resilient”, including the unemployment rate at a 48-year low of 3.9 per cent, the treasurer sought to focus attention on the “big challenges” of inflation, falling real wages, rising interest rates and worsening cost of living.

He cited petrol prices – up 12 per cent since the end of April; wholesale electricity prices – up 237 per cent, and household power bills set to rocket; and gas prices – up more than 300 per cent over recent years.

I mean, every new government does this. Every new government goes, “Omg! Look at the dumpster fire we’ve inherited. Those last guys were total clowns. Oh well. Sorry. Can’t pay for that stuff we promised now.”

So there’s a bit of that. 

But there are definitely some challenges ahead. As I noted last week, soaring electricity prices are going to give the economy quite a “shock”.

(If you’re the 100,000^th media pundit to drop that pun you win a free hamburger.)

But never-the-less, the March quarter data show us entering the electrical strom in pretty good stead.

The household savings rate has come off a touch, but still suggests households, on average, are sitting on a nice pile of cash.

In fact, the latest deposit data shows households have stashed away almost $270 billion since January 2020.

(My mattress is certainly lumpy I can tell you.)

That savings war chest, in turn, is helping consumer spending hold up, with discretionary spending (on stuff you don’t really need) now back above its pre-pandemic level.

And Aussie exports are still booming along thanks to the ongoing commodities boom and energy price spike. Export prices are at record highs.

Which is funnelling money into mining companies by the truckload. In fact, mining industry profits are now more the entire non-mining economy. Nuts.

And the public sector continues to provide strong economic support, with the public sector’s share of the economy close to record highs.

Now it is true that at some point we’re going to have to wind that public sector back a bit, and the outlook for exports could get wobbly if things in China or Ukraine get worse.

But then again, there’s always something. There’s always dark clouds in the sky somewhere.

So look, all we have is what we know. And what that tells us is that things look good. The economy is pumping along pretty well.

Let’s take our wins when we can find them.

JG.

What do the banks know that they’re not telling us?

Well, that de-escalated quickly.

No sooner had rates lifted than they’re on the way back down again.

Pretty much all the banks passed on the full 25 basis points after the RBA’s hike earlier in the month.

And now, they’re all dropping rates:

Australia’s fourth-largest lender, ANZ, has cut its lowest variable rate back down to 2.29 per cent.

The change is only for new customers as the bank looks to attract more Aussies.

The rate cut comes after the bank hiked variable rates by 0.25 percentage points on May 13 for new and existing customers following this month’s cash rate hike.

ANZ is not the only Big Four bank cutting variable rates for new customers.

Last Tuesday, Westpac hiked rates for new and existing customers by 0.25 per cent on the majority of its variable rate loans.

However, on its lowest variable rate, it reintroduced a honeymoon rate of just 2.09 per cent, which increased by 0.40 percentage points after the first two years.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) also launched Unloan last week, a new digital offering with a starting variable rate of 2.14 per cent.

“What these big bank cuts show is that competition in the mortgage market is still alive and kicking, despite the RBA hikes,” RateCity research director Sally Tindall said.

Yes these are introductory and honey-moon rates, but it points to a couple of interesting things.

First, the RBA has a big impact on the mortgage market, but it’s not the only factor. Right now, competition between the banks is having a big impact, and rates in the low 2-percents are still fantastic.

Second, I think markets are dialing back their expectations of rate hikes.

Remember that after we got the March quarter inflation data, which came in much hotter than expected, everyone thought it was off to the races on rate hikes.

The RBA did too, hiking rate by a surprisingly large 25 bips at their May meeting.

But then a couple of weeks ago we got a look at the wages data, and it came in much lower than expected.

At just an annual growth rate of 2.4%, it was well below the 3 to 4% the RBA reckon it needs to keep inflation in the target band.

Suddenly, the justification for an aggressive hiking cycle just evaporated. There’s time for everyone to take a breather and watch a bit more data come in.

The banks know this, and so I think they think they might have jumped the gun a bit.

That gives them some room to keep rates lower for longer, and offer new borrowers some fantastic deals.

And I think that’s the reality on rates right now. Lower for longer.

And don’t be afraid to shop around.

JG.

Albo has inherited an electricity cluster-fuddle. But there is a way out.

Get ready for the great electricity price shock of 2022.

Seriously, it looks like things are about to get ugly.

Last week, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) approved price increases of up to 18 per cent in NSW and 12 per cent in Queensland from July 1.

That sucks.

But it’s only getting started. Because wholesale electricity prices are on a tear away and aren’t coming down anytime soon.

The numbers are actually kind of terrifying.

In September last year, electricity was $48.90 a megawatt-hour.

They were up to $77.17/MWh by January…

… and then to just over $100/MWh by March…

… and now they’re running at more than $300/MWh!

Ouch!

And while some of that is from temporary factors (3 reactors at various coal-fired power plants are off-line right now thanks to malfunction), the futures markets only have prices coming back to something like $100 – $120 / MWh.

So we’re effectively talking about wholesale electricity prices tripling, and staying there.

This creates a heap of pain all down the line.

First there are the retailers, who buy from the wholesale market. If they’ve hedged well, they’ll survive, but many haven’t. Three have gone bankrupt in recent weeks, and customers of Electricity in a Box have been told that their prices will go up 95%!

(How many of those customers are going to stay?)

Then you have the impact on industry. Gas prices have surged four-fold for two textile manufacturers in Melbourne. This might be enough to kill off what remains of Aussie manufacturing.

Then you have the impact on consumers, as rising electricity prices eat into disposable income and cause a reduction in spending across the board.

And finally, since all of this feeds into the CPI, you’re looking at higher inflation rates, and potentially, more aggressive rate hikes out of the RBA.

None of this is good news.

So, can we do anything about it.

Well, we could do what the Tories in the U.K have just done. They’ve introduced a Windfall Profits Tax – basically, big energy companies have made a tonne of cash simply because Russia invaded the Ukraine and prices spiked.

They’ll now be taxed 25% on their extraordinary profits, with the proceeds being funnelled back to consumers to help with their power bills.

Every household in the UK will receive £400 in October. Low income households will receive more.

So there’s that.

Alternatively, Albo could trigger the ADGSM – the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism. This was introduced by the last government under Malcolm Turnbull, and creates a way for us to stop exporting energy when we need it at home.

Because we don’t have a shortage of coal or gas. We just export most of it. (Three quarters of our gas goes to China.)

What impact would that have?

Well, we have evidence. Western Australia runs their own domestic reservation program. And whereas people were paying $50 Gj on the east coast last week, over in WA they were paying just $9 Gj.

Smart

You’d also need some kind of mechanism for coal as well, but it’s not hard.

The point is we have a choice.

We keep exporting everything we dig up, and risk watching the whole economy go down in flames.

Or we introduce a domestic reservation, and look after the Aussie economy first.

Kinda seems like a no-brainer to me.

JG.

Lots of jobs, but don’t go asking for a pay rise.

This is the data that didn’t matter last week, but probably ends up mattering a lot.

I’m talking about labour market data we got last week.

To start with the unemployment rate fell to a 48-year low of 3.9 per cent. That’s the lowest level since 1974.

Pretty epic.

There was a thought in the punditry that such a strong number might be enough to shift the focus of the election back on to the economy and tilt the balance in favour of the coalition.

It didn’t happen.

Unless you’re imagining that things could have been worse, but it’s hard to see how they could have been much worse.

And so it was another strong result, with a 90,000 odd movement from part-time to full-time work particularly encouraging. The number of unemployed is also now at 537,000, down from 700,000 just before the COVID-19 crisis

But while the jobs numbers came in strong, the wages data came in weak.

The Wage Price Index grew at 0.7% in the March Quarter, and just 2.4% over the year, which was pretty underwhelming.

These weaker-than-expected numbers had two big implications.

First, it brought focus onto real wages.

With inflation running at 5.1% over the year, the gap between the two is how fast purchasing power (=real wages) fell.

That is, it told us that real wages are falling 2.7% a year.

Well, that’s not great.

In fact, it’s pretty bad.

As Anthony Albanese was keen to point out, it was the biggest fall in real wages in twenty years.

So if there was political mileage to be made from a good unemployment rate, the fall in real wages probably took a fair bit of the gloss off it.

The second big implication is what this means for the path of interest rates from here.

For most of the year the RBA was saying they wanted to see evidence of sustained wage inflation above 3% before they’d consider hiking rates.

They surprised us with a rate hike last month, but noted in the minutes that they thought wage inflation was there because their business liaison was telling them that it was.

Turns out though, the business liaison was wrong, and it’s now looking like the RBA jumped the gun.

It’s too late to go back and change April’s decision, but what it means going forward is that any prospect of jumbo-sized rates cuts (something more that 25 basis points) is now off the cards.

Many economists are now wondering how high and how far interest rates will rise, with the answer certainly being lower than it would have been just three weeks ago.

So that means lower rates for longer.

Which, funnily enough, is what I’ve been saying for a while too.

JG.