Household Finance Confidence Wobbles

Digital Finance Analytics has released the latest edition of the Household Finance Confidence index, to end March 2017. The index fell slightly to 102.5 from 103.4, but is still slightly above a neutral setting.

Looking at the property segments, we find that whilst owner occupied households are a little more confident, property investor confidence fell, thanks to the recent noise about rising mortgage rates, possible changes to tax breaks and questions about future capital gains.

Looking across the states, confidence remains highest in NSW, but fell slightly in VIC. There were slight improvements in the other states.

Here is the scorecard which drives the index. Most striking is the fall in real incomes and small rises in concerns about job security. As interest rates rise, more households are concerned about debt. Despite this, property owning households saw their net worth rise.

By way of background, these results are derived from our household surveys, averaged across Australia. We have 52,000 households in our sample at any one time. We include detailed questions covering various aspects of a household’s financial footprint. The index measures how households are feeling about their financial health. To calculate the index we ask questions which cover a number of different dimensions. We start by asking households how confident they are feeling about their job security, whether their real income has risen or fallen in the past year, their view on their costs of living over the same period, whether they have increased their loans and other outstanding debts including credit cards and whether they are saving more than last year. Finally we ask about their overall change in net worth over the past 12 months – by net worth we mean net assets less outstanding debts.

Author: Martin North

Martin North is the Principal of Digital Finance Analytics

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