Multiple news wires are reporting the worst kept secret in Australia as house prices fell again across Sydney and Melbourne over the Easter weekend month of April.
According to reports in the Fairfax press property date providers are set to show more price falls over the month for Australia's two major residential property markets.
For share market investors this means there's unlikely to be any rebound higher in bank shares, with the likes of Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA), Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC) and Australia New Zealand Banking Group (ASX: ANZ) tracking sideways or lower with property prices for 18 months now.
This is because credit or lending growth has ground to a halt on the back of the Royal Commission and tougher demands by the prudential regulator APRA that lending to investors is reined in as a percentage of total lending.
As a general rule of thumb the more banks lend on a sustainably risk adjusted basis the more profit they can make, so less lending equals less profits.
As some consolation one sugar hit on the horizon for property owners is the increasing prospect of the Reserve Bank cutting benchmark lending rates in a move that should support property prices over the short term at least.
