Interest rates aren't likely to move until late 2022 or early the following year, some experts say. Yet most are predicting Australia's sizzling property market will cool within months.
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Of 28 asked about NSW house prices by comparison site Finder, 19 say they expect a peak this year. Eleven believe it will happen in the final quarter and eight before October.
The remaining nine pundits say the high water mark won't arrive until 2022 or beyond.
A similar slowing is predicted around the country but why is it so, if the cash rate remains at an all-time low and loans are dirt cheap?
The answer is that the two aren't necessarily linked, according to finance expert Martin North.
The Digital Finance Analytics founder says without ongoing support from the RBA, banks will need to continually refresh their funding.
That means raising deposits, which involves consumers paying more, or banks going to international capital markets.
"We've already seen fixed rates move ahead of what the RBA has said," Mr North told AAP.
"There will be more of that.
"Even if the cash rate stays where it is until 2024, and personally I think they will have to move sooner than that, the international capital markets and the cost of deposits means banks are going to have to be more careful about the pricing of their books.
"That's going to have a significant flow-on effect then in terms of housing affordability."
After borrowing a record $48 billion for housing in the first four months of 2020, Australians took loans worth $75 billion between January and April this year, according to ABS data.
Finder's consumer research head Graham Cooke doubts it's a trend that can continue.
"Expect the current rise in prices and activity to peter out by 2022," he said.
"For first-time buyers, this means that the bottom rung of the housing ladder should stop becoming steeper within the next six months."
According to Finder's Economic Sentiment Tracker experts are still not optimistic about the affordability of housing.
Just one in 34 surveyed was positive about the metric, with 26 of them saying they had a negative sentiment about it in the next six months.
However Mr Cooke says 2022 is shaping as more affordable and anyone saving for a deposit should now target a purchase next year.
First-home buyers are to get a proposed $25,000 grant to help them enter the bubbling NSW market, in a government move to overhaul property tax.
However Wealth Within founder Dale Gillham says the grant isn't helping fix the problem.
"We constantly hear that property is overpriced and that first-home buyers struggle," he said.
"Encouraging more demand from first home buyers only perpetuates this snowball."
Australian Associated Press
