Falling house prices make the RBA's life easier

House prices in Australia rose much more slowly in Q1 than expected. The property price is growing at a rate of 6.9% yoy, but there is no risk of rising to double digit, says Commerzbank.

That means that one major stumbling block for Australia's monetary policy has been more or less removed. So far the RBA had been obliged to take the property market into consideration. Its desire to weaken AUD therefore seemed gradually less convincing. The RBA itself referred to regional differences in the development of property prices in much detail. Admittedly these are explanations that leave much scope for interpretation. "Hard" official data has more clout.

In particular as the AUD-USD exchange rate has been falling for days anyway.