DAVY VIEW

One takeaway from today’s residential property price data for March is the continued strong growth in first-time buyer (FTB) transactions in March. This aligns with a key message from this morning’s Banks Monthly note. Some moderation in housing prices is likely to continue this year as supply increases. However, while we had expected 6.4% annual growth in Q1 – down from 7% in Q4 – this was exceeded with an actual increase of 6.8%. This suggests upside risk to our 5.5% forecast for the full year.