Approvals Jumped 7.2%. Houses Rose 0.4%. | Morning Brief 1 Aug 2026

The ABS said dwelling approvals rose 7.2% in June. That number is doing a lot of work. Houses — the thing most investors actually buy and most tenants actually want — rose 0.4%. Everything else was apartments, up 17.8%, the most volatile series the ABS publishes. And underneath the national number, Victoria fell 13.9% to the weakest approvals in the country, with the highest unemployment at 5.1% and the cheapest capital city house prices. Those three facts are the same fact. Meanwhile the cost to build kept climbing: petroleum refining +37.5% in a quarter, road freight +15.5%, import prices +5.7%. Replacement cost is rising while market prices sit flat. When those two lines cross, new construction stops being viable — which is exactly why houses got 0.4% and not 15%. And the one part of the approvals number that did grow is the part most exposed to the SMSF borrowing ban: Charter Keck Cramer counts 22,000 of 23,000 off-the-plan apartments in marketing as at risk this year. FREE: The Five Market Environments — how to read demand, supply and tenure before you spend a dollar: https://ripe.house/brief-supply-split WHAT'S IN TODAY'S BRIEF 00:00 The number nobody reported 00:18 Approvals: 18,328 dwellings, up 7.2% 00:41 Houses +0.4% vs units +17.8% 01:04 Victoria: -13.9% and the weakest in the nation 01:21 Melbourne is now cheaper than Adelaide 01:58 The capital city ladder just inverted 02:31 Where approvals actually moved 03:03 Why houses are not getting built 03:34 22,000 apartments and the SMSF ban 04:04 Free: The Five Market Environments 04:24 System Watch: Warrnambool VIC 3280 05:08 Warrnambool: 0.85% vacancy, 5.18% yield 05:49 System Watch: Nambucca Heads NSW 2448 06:30 Nambucca Heads: 6.45% yield, check the annual 07:12 Warrnambool street map: sold price 07:41 Warrnambool street map: rental yield 08:09 Warrnambool street map: owner-occupiers 08:39 Warrnambool street map: social housing 09:06 Question of the day: Shepparton 10:43 Before the RBA meets on 10 August SYSTEM WATCH Warrnambool VIC 3280 — R-Score percentile 96, 0.85% short-term vacancy, 5.18% gross yield, 23,162 GNAF addresses across 721 streets. Nambucca Heads NSW 2448 — R-Score percentile 96, 6.45% short-term yield against 4.52% across the year, and a 4.87% short-term vacancy that says underwrite the annual numbers, not the headline. SOURCES ABS Building Approvals, June 2026 (released 31 July 2026), seasonally adjusted ABS Producer Price Indexes and International Trade Price Indexes, June quarter 2026 ABS Labour Force, June 2026 Charter Keck Cramer via AFR, 29 July 2026 Elizabeth Redman, Sydney Morning Herald, on Melbourne's median falling below Adelaide ABS Census 2021 tenure at SA1 · GNAF August 2025 address points Next RBA decision: 10–11 August 2026. Cash rate 4.35%. This is general information, not personal financial advice. Ripehouse Advisory.

Building approvals came out yesterday and the headline said dwelling approvals jumped 7.2%. Suppliers recovering apparently except standalone houses went up 0.4%, 0.4%. The entire jump is apartments and in Victoria approvals went backwards 13.9%. Later I'll show you a single regional city with 23,000 addresses where the rental yield changes street by street. Let's go. So here are the three numbers that actually matter this morning and they all come out of one release. First, total dwelling approvals for June 18, 3 and 28 up 7.2% on May and up 8.9% on last year. That is the number that got reported. Second, split that number in two private houses up 0.4%. Everything that isn't a house, apartments, townhouses, units up 17.8%. So the recovery everybody just read about is almost entirely a multi-unit number and multi-unit approvals are the single most volatile series the Bureau publishes. One large project in one council can move it and third, the one that tells you where this is actually happening. Queensland up 33.4% in a month, New South Wales up 13.2% and Victoria, the state that needs housing supply the most, down 13.9%. Which brings me to today's story and it is the most important number published in Australian Property this month sitting quietly inside a what can you buy article. Elizabeth Redmond in the Herald went around the country asking what the national median house price, $1,276,000 actually buys you in each capital. And buried in the data is this. Melbourne's median house price is now $1.04 million. Brisbane's is $1.21 million. Adelaide is $1.25 million. Perth is $1.18 million. Melbourne, a city of 5.3 million people, is now the cheapest big city house market on the mainland. Start with the approvals split because this is where the headline and the reality separate. Houses up 0.4%, non-house dwellings up 17.8%, total up 7.2%. If you only read the total, you would conclude that supply is responding to high prices. What actually happened is that apartment approvals moved and house approvals didn't. And the product most investors buy and most tenants want is the standalone house. Supply of that is growing at less than half a percent a month. Now the state map, because this is not a national story, Queensland up 33.4% in a single month, New South Wales up 13.2%, Western Australia up 10.7%, and then South Australia down 11.5%, Tasmania down 22.5%, and Victoria down 13.9%. Victoria has the weakest approvals, the highest unemployment at 5.1%, and the cheapest capital city house prices. Those three facts are the same fact. Here is the part I think is genuinely underpriced. The producer price data landed the same week. Petroleum refining up 37.5% in a quarter, road freight up 15.5%, building construction output prices up 1.4% driven by house construction. Import prices up 5.7% in a quarter, with petroleum imports up 47.1%. So the cost to build a new house is rising on materials, transport and labour at once, while the market price of an existing house is flat to falling. Replacement cost is going up, market price is going sideways. When those lines cross, new construction stops being viable, which is precisely why house approvals are up 0.4% and not 15%. And then the tax change, nobody has fully priced. Charter Keck Kramer counted 22,000 off-the-plan apartments in marketing at risk this year because the self-managed superfund borrowing ban removes the pre-sale buyer developers need to hit their finance thresholds. 22,000 of the 23,000