‘Rate Cut’ Rory Bets Australia’s Highest Peak on House Prices

By Jacob Greber

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- An Australian academic predicting a collapse in house prices has made a bet with Macquarie Group Ltd. economist Rory Robertson that commits the loser to walk from Canberra to the top of the nation’s highest mountain.

A forecast by University of Western Sydney Associate Professor Steve Keen that house prices will collapse by 40 percent, double the current plunge in the U.S., has a 1 percent chance of being correct, Sydney-based Robertson said today.

Keen, who made headlines in Australia and overseas with his forecast that the nation may be facing a depression, and last month sold his inner-Sydney home, accepted Robertson’s challenge. If house prices fall by less than 20 percent, he will embark on the 230 km (143 mile) hike from the nation’s capital to Mount Kosciuszko, a 2,228-meter peak that is snowcapped for much of the year.

“Moreover, the loser must wear a tee-shirt saying: ‘I was hopelessly wrong on home prices! Ask me how’,” said Robertson, dubbed “Rate Cut Rory” after accurately forecasting the central bank would cut rates in 1996, betting against the market.

“I expect to record an easy win within two years,” Robertson added. “That’s because falls in Australia-wide home prices will be limited by our lack of overbuilding, our much more disciplined mortgage market, and especially, the Reserve Bank’s ability to drive mortgage rates lower.”

Central bank Governor Glenn Stevens has cut the benchmark lending rate by two percentage points since early September to a 3 1/2-year low of 5.25 percent, the biggest reduction since a recession in 1991. Stevens will reduce the overnight cash rate target on Dec. 2 by at least half a point, according to all 17 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

‘Fit Enough’

The decline in house prices will be measured using Bureau of Statistics figures starting from the second quarter of 2008, “peak to trough,” Keen said in a telephone interview.

“That could take 15 years,” Keen, 55, added. “I’ve got a feeling I’ll still be fit enough and I hope he is.”

While Robertson, 42, said he “never says never,” Keen’s forecast of a 40 percent drop in Australian house prices “effectively requires a meltdown” of the nation’s financial system.

Australian house prices fell 1.8 percent in the third quarter from the three months through June, the biggest decline since 1978.

Household debt has almost doubled since 1999 to around 160 percent of incomes, a higher ratio than in the U.S. and U.K., according to AMP Capital Investors. The median national house price soared about 140 percent in the same period.

To contact the reporter for this story: Jacob Greber in Sydney at jgreber@bloomberg.net