Chinese splurging on AUS property, Greece digging in heels over cutting pensions, employment up in US and Europe; UST 10yr yield 2.21%; oil down; NZ$1 = 74.4 US¢, TWI = 77.8

I will paste this as some tell me it won't open for them

n Sydney, over 80 per cent of inner city apartment buyers are Chinese or Asian investors. In Melbourne’s CBD the figure is even higher.

The Chinese buyers are not big institutions but rather they are mums and dads that have made some money in their home country and see Australia as a good place to invest. Often they have been driven by a herd mentality in communities where families inspire each other to buy Sydney or Melbourne apartments -- it’s similar to what happens at suburban barbecues in Australia.

In any market, when a herd gets frightened it can turn viciously in the other direction. And that's the real danger we face.

The situations in the two capitals are different but they are also linked. Let’s start with Sydney.

In recent months, Sydney apartment rents have been edging up partly because more people are living in each apartment but, in contrast, the actual prices of inner Sydney apartments has started to fall. Yes fall. No one has heard about falling apartment values in Sydney for a long time.

The good news about Chinese investment in Sydney is that the biggest developer, Meriton, insisted that the Chinese families who bought apartments rent the apartments so there is no big vacancy overhang.

In Melbourne it has been a different market. The biggest developers are Chinese institutions often supported by Chinese banks. Some 20,000 apartments have been approved in the CBD, almost all are Chinese/ Asian backed developments and the number of apartments in the inner suburbs is of a similar magnitude, also with a high level of Chinese buying.

These are massive figures and the current and planned construction is underpinning the Victorian economy.

In most developments, Chinese and Asian investors pay a deposit (10 per cent is normal but it may be lower in Chinese bank funded projects) and on that basis the apartments are built -- it’s a straight ‘off the plan’ property development system. But, unlike Sydney, many of the apartments that have been completed have not been leased. So there is a vacancy overhang which makes the market more vulnerable than Sydney.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/5/5/australian-news/ch…

German Government Bond Slump Enters Eighth Day

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/german-bonds-fall-bef…

The Chinese way of investing is more akin to gambling they are counting on more following to boost prices and they see there huge pop as a driver to price increases. Trouble is like any herd once it starts to turn it becomes a stampede. There share market is a classic for this prices going through the roof not supported by figures and is being driven by retail investors.

Cracking US perspective on the TPP:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-pruett/a-multinational-trojan-ho_b_7…

''So, who, if anyone, benefits by so-called "free trade?" Only the multinational corporations set "free" to scour the earth for the hottest sweatshops and the cheapest labor. Free trade is a global race to the bottom.

''Packaged as a gift to the American people that will renew industry and make us more competitive, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a Trojan horse. It's a coup by multinational corporations who want global subservience to their agenda. Buyer beware. Citizens beware.''

Listen to the Chatter

All students of the Auckland property market should watch the latest video on Business Spectator narrated by their resident Chinese Spectator columnist Peter Cai - listen carefully to what he has to say
Video towards the bottom of the landing page
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/

The Chinese investment wave hasn't crested yet

You have to ask yourself is this happening here

Last year Hong Kong and Singapore introduced Stamp Duties of 15% and immediately Chinese investment in Australian property doubles

Australia already has existing obstacles to foreign investment, however as Peter Cai says how do you jail a foreign investor, and as for the $5000 application fee and Victorian State 3% stamp duty he dismisses them as mere pocket-fluff. He says it has to go to 15%

How much is pouring into New Zealand - nobody knows - everybody says it's of no consequence

Anyone who thinks the bubble is about to burst needs to revise their thinking

A bigger bubble machine is coming

China’s GDP has grown by $10 trillion dollars during this century alone—that is, there has been a boom across the land that makes the California gold rush appear pastoral by comparison. Yet in all that frenzied prospecting there have been almost no mistakes, busted camps, empty pans or even personal bankruptcies. When something has occasionally gone wrong with an “investment” the prospectors have gathered in noisy crowds on the streets and pounded their pans for relief—-a courtesy that the regime has invariably granted.

So in two short decades, China has erected a monumental Ponzi economy that is economically rotten to the core. It has 1.5 billion tons of steel capacity, but “sell-through” demand of less than half that amount— that is, on-going demand for sheet steel to go into cars and appliances and rebar into replacement construction once the current pyramid building binge finally expires. The same is true for its cement industry, ship-building, solar and aluminum industries—to say nothing of 70 million empty luxury apartments and vast stretches of over-built highways, fast rail, airports, shopping mails and new cities.

In short, the flip-side of the China’s giant credit bubble is the most massive malinvesment of real economic resources—-labor, raw materials and capital goods—ever known. Effectively, the country-side pig sties have been piled high with copper inventories and the urban neighborhoods with glass, cement and rebar erections that can’t possibly earn an economic return, but all of which has become “collateral” for even more “loans” under the Chinese Ponzi.

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/chinas-monumental-ponzi-heres-how…

May be it's just Sydney and Melbourne. In Brisbane the property market is as flat as its International Airport's runway...