Banks flag a housing slowdown, AI won’t pick your stocks & Ren’s portfolio reviewed

**Alec Renehan** (0:00)
We're certainly seeing headlines about house prices crashing.

**Bryce Leske** (0:03)
Every day.

**Alec Renehan** (0:03)
I wouldn't call it a crash.

**Bryce Leske** (0:05)
Yeah, accelerating.

**Alec Renehan** (0:06)
What we are seeing is that home loan applications are dropping fast. Now, if you were thinking that a big banks are in trouble, well, don't worry. Home loan applications may have been down 15%, the profit was up 7% to $10.9 billion for the year.

**Bryce Leske** (0:26)
Welcome to another episode of Equity Mates, a show where we explore what's possible in the world of investing. If you've just joined our community for the very first time, a huge welcome. My name is Bryce.

**Alec Renehan** (0:35)
And I'm Ren. And today we're talking about Australian house prices, the price of diamonds. We're answering a question on using AI in our investing process. And I'm looking at four stocks in my portfolio. Bryce, big episode.

**Bryce Leske** (0:48)
Massive episode, as always. Looking forward to getting stuck into it. But we have a community call out.

**Alec Renehan** (0:53)
Yes.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:54)
We need some support.

**Alec Renehan** (0:55)
We are asking for help.

**Bryce Leske** (0:56)
Yes.

**Alec Renehan** (0:57)
Specifically, we're asking Meta for help.

**Bryce Leske** (0:59)
We are asking Meta for help. Well, anyone that knows of anyone that works at Meta, one of our colleagues here, Louis, who runs a lot of our paid media and does a lot of social work for us, has unexpectedly been locked out of all Meta platforms. Instagram, doing work for Equity Mates, we should say. Instagram, Facebook.

**Alec Renehan** (1:17)
Nothing nefarious.

**Bryce Leske** (1:18)
Nothing nefarious.

**Alec Renehan** (1:19)
Just needed to confirm his identity. And he was one of those naughty kids that put his age in incorrectly back in the day.

**Bryce Leske** (1:27)
Many years ago.

**Alec Renehan** (1:28)
And so when he had to upload his passport, his date of birth didn't match his passport date of birth.

**Bryce Leske** (1:33)
Instant ban.

**Alec Renehan** (1:34)
Instantly got locked out of every Meta account. Can't create new accounts because WhatsApp is tied to your phone number.

**Bryce Leske** (1:40)
Very frustrating.

**Alec Renehan** (1:41)
No ability to speak to a person at Meta. Yeah. So we are using the Equity Mates channels to try and help Louis.
Please help Louis. Please get in contact with Meta.

**Bryce Leske** (1:52)
Get in contact with us.

**Alec Renehan** (1:53)
Oh, true, true. Or Meta. He doesn't deserve to lose all of his social media for just trying to do his job.

**Bryce Leske** (1:59)
So if you know anyone at Meta or you are working at Meta and can give us a hand, hit us up at equitymates.com/contact. All right, let's get into it.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:08)
News and markets.

**Bryce Leske** (2:11)
Two headlines we're going to cover off today. We're going to do a bit of a deep dive into housing, what's going on there and the effects that some of the policies have had. And also look at the dynamics in diamond pricing and what's going on in that market. So Ren, let's look at housing because we've had three of the four big banks report.
And of course, that is driving headlines.

**Alec Renehan** (2:30)
Yeah, well, we're certainly seeing headlines about house prices crashing.

**Bryce Leske** (2:34)
Every day.

**Alec Renehan** (2:35)
We will talk about the house price movements in this story. I wouldn't call it a crash.

**Bryce Leske** (2:41)
Yeah, accelerating.

**Alec Renehan** (2:42)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what we are seeing is that home loan applications are dropping fast. So if we talk about some of the big numbers from the banks, Commonwealth Bank reported that home loan applications are down 15 percent, Westpac said 20 percent, and ANZ said applications are down 12 percent. Now, NAB haven't reported yet. They report the day this episode goes live, but they've previously flagged a 15 percent fall in applications post the budget.

**Bryce Leske** (3:11)
Now, you might be thinking if you've just joined, why does this matter? Less home loan applications simply means less demand for people wanting to buy housing.

**Alec Renehan** (3:18)
Yeah, less buyers.

**Bryce Leske** (3:18)
Less buyers in the market. So some of the reasons for this, we've obviously seen the big tax changes now starting to get legislated, announced a couple of months ago. We've also had three rate rises this year. So, you know, there's a lot of pressure on buyers in the market at the moment.

**Alec Renehan** (3:34)
And if we dig into the numbers, what we see is that it's investors leaving the market faster than owner-occupiers. So in Commonwealth Bank, they split out the numbers in their results. Investor applications were down 28%.