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Author: Linda Avetisian

Is a soft credit crunch coming?

Posted on by Linda Avetisian

The correction is deeper than the official data shows. Prices are down around 3% nationally, but on the deals we’re seeing, the top end has likely fallen 15 to 20%, and the middle of the Sydney and Melbourne market around 10% from market peak.

I don’t expect a GFC-style credit freeze. But a softer credit crunch is starting to move through the system: money is still available, but it is dearer, slower and more selective. I expect property development finance to be hit hardest, which will worsen undersupply.

Watch the interview with Ausbiz

In my view, the case for developing hasn’t been this weak in 30 years. There is another side to this. As banks tighten their credit policies, deals they would normally fund are coming to private credit lenders instead. That makes how each loan is structured matter more than ever.

Disclaimer
Msquared Capital Pty Ltd ACN 622 507 297 AFSL 520293. The information provided is general in nature and reflects the views of the speaker at the time of recording. Forward-looking information is inherently uncertain, and actual results may differ materially from projections. The information has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs, and does not constitute personal financial product advice, investment advice or a recommendation. Before making any investment decision, you should consider whether the information is appropriate to your circumstances and seek independent financial advice.

Going in circles: the soft credit crunch and the iceberg ahead

Posted on by Linda Avetisian

IN BRIEF

— Economy: the cost of labour and the cost of capital are both on a long-term upward trajectory.

— Property: the top end has fallen hardest. Prices may be near the bottom; credit is not.

— Private credit: Bathla is the tip of an iceberg of developer stress, not a failure of the asset class.

— The outlook: a soft credit crunch. Money is still there, but dearer, slower and far pickier.

Two thousand half-built homes. Around 40 lenders. A fund freezing its redemptions. Bathla has every investor asking the same question: is this the start of something bigger? Last week we put that question, and many more, to economist Warren Hogan at our investor evening. The conversation covered three things our investors care most about: the economy, property and private credit.1

According to Warren, our economy is going through structural change, both locally and globally. Three forces are driving it: demographic change, governments’ obsession with excess spending, and the AI revolution.

The result is interest rates that stay higher for longer, and inflation that stays stubbornly above where anyone would like. That puts further downward pressure on asset prices, while GDP growth runs at a low-to-modest pace below 2%. We may avoid a technical recession unless we are hit by a major economic shock, but effective living standards will most likely keep declining.

The good news is that employment should remain sticky, and that alone underpins the economy’s resilience. We will not be thriving; we will be going through the motions.

Warren’s thesis leaves us with two uncomfortable realities about the future of the global economy: the cost of labour and the cost of capital are both on a long-term upward trajectory.

So what does that mean for property and private credit? We believe we are entering a soft credit crunch, and every investor is asking whether Bathla is the tip of the iceberg.

Part 1: The economy — it’s dependency,

The most important slide of the night wasn’t about interest rates. It was about age.

Australia’s dependency ratio, the number of young and old people relative to those of working age, fell from the early 1970s until 2010. For forty years, the workforce grew faster than the population it supported. That meant excess supply, falling inflation and falling interest rates. It was the tailwind behind almost every asset price in our lifetimes.2

That tailwind has turned. Dependency has been rising since 2010, and this year the first baby boomers turn 80. Total population is a proxy for demand; the working-age population is a proxy for supply. As dependency rises, demand grows faster than the capacity to meet it. It shows up as labour shortages. Job vacancies are still around 40% above 2019 levels.2

Immigration does not solve this at the level of the whole economy. Migrants fill vacancies, but they also bring demand: they need homes, services and infrastructure. That is why population growth of 1.4% feels so different in a housing shortage.

The second force is government. Government consumption spending across all levels now takes around 23% of GDP, up from about 19% a decade ago. And governments plan to grow that spending by around 3% in FY27, while the economy’s speed limit is about 2%. Warren’s arithmetic is simple: to get inflation down, the RBA needs 18–24 months of growth below 2%, and if government takes its 3%, the private sector can barely grow at all. The RBA is pressing the brake while Canberra presses the accelerator.2,3

The third force is AI. Research cited by Warren estimates that a quarter of Australia’s workforce is in roles at high risk of displacement, and more than half will be significantly affected. In the long run, AI may be the productivity answer Australia desperately needs. In the short run, data centres compete with housing for land, power, tradespeople and capital.4

Put the three together and you get Warren’s two uncomfortable realities. Labour is scarcer, so it costs more. Capital is in demand from ageing societies, deficit-funded governments and a global AI investment boom, so it costs more too. Australia’s 10-year bond yield has hit a 15-year high of around 5.4%, and the US 30-year yield reached a 20-year high in August.2

The RBA today lifted the cash rate for the fourth time this year, to 4.60% p.a. Warren’s central case has it above 5% by early 2027, with further hikes in November and February. His reason: after inflation, the real cash rate is barely above zero. For an economy running at its speed limit, that is not restrictive enough.5,2

The RBA is also telling us how much pain it is prepared to accept. Unemployment rose to 4.6% in August, up from 4.5% in July. A week ago, Governor Michele Bullock said that unemployment “between 4.5 and 5 (per cent) will probably take enough heat out of the labour market” to ease inflation. In other words, the RBA expects, and is prepared to accept, a softer jobs market. That matters for property: interest rates create pressure, but unemployment creates forced sellers.6,7

Headline GDP will keep growing, helped by population. But when the population grows at 1.% and the economy at 1.5% (currently trending 2.1%) being the base RBA forecast, GDP per person is barely moving. That is what “going through the motions” looks like.2

Part 2: Property — it can fall further without becoming cheap

Property is where these forces meet.

As a private credit provider secured by property, we see valuations and sales every week, and in Sydney and Melbourne this is one of the sharpest corrections at the top end of the market in recent memory. On the deals crossing our desk, blue-chip suburbs are down 15–20% from their peak, traditional mortgage-belt suburbs 10–15%, and the lower end of the market around 5%. The rest of the country is following suit. 8

Encouragingly, bargain hunters are starting to return, a sign that prices may be closer to the bottom than the top. With interest rates on the rise, it may dampen any hastened recovery in the near future. But the bottom for prices and the bottom for credit are not the same thing, and that is where this story goes next.  

The official index shows national values only around 3.6% below their March peak. That understates it: index data lags, and averages away what is happening at the edges of the market. 9

What is unusual is turnover: sales volumes are down about 40% from November 2025 peak. Listings are up 18% on a year ago, auction clearance rates have been below 50% since June, and vendor discounting is the highest since early 2023. A market that isn’t transacting is a market that can’t price itself.2,9

Here’s what many commentators miss: property can fall further without becoming cheap.

Affordability isn’t just the price. It is the price plus the cost of the money used to buy it. If rates rise faster than prices fall, borrowing capacity shrinks and affordability gets worse, not better. At the same time, construction costs keep rising. House construction costs are up about 51% since before COVID. That puts a floor under the value of new homes, because nobody builds what costs more to deliver than it sells for.10

That is the housing paradox. We need 1.2 million new homes, a target now not expected to be met until December 2030. Yet about 3,470 construction companies failed in 2025–26, one in four of all company insolvencies nationally. Every builder that fails is supply we don’t get, and that is a disaster for housing, for inflation and for the economy.10

The biggest problem in property may not be falling prices. It may be projects that simply no longer stack up. And every project that doesn’t get built keeps housing unaffordable for longer.

Part 3: Private credit — a soft crunch, not a hard freeze

Bathla Group went into administration in late August owing an estimated $3.4 to $3.6 billion to around 40 lenders. About 2,000 homes were mid-construction and a pipeline of around 14,000 more is now uncertain. 1

 

Bathla is the tip of the iceberg. Just not the iceberg you think.

So, is Bathla the tip of the iceberg?

Large-scale, highly leveraged developers, at most.

Large residential developers need a continual flow of sales, settlements and refinancing. Their model assumes the next deal funds the last one. When sales volumes fall 40%, costs rise by double digits and funding costs double, that model breaks, whoever the lender is. Bathla was simply the largest and most visible example. We expect more developers and builders to follow, particularly those whose exit plans assume an ordinary property market.

As the music stops, developers with deeper balance sheets and lower leverage will get through, as in other cycles. Higher-leveraged developers are beginning to get caught out in what is one of the most challenging times for developers in the past decades.

Recovering money in a mid-completed development site is not for the faint-hearted.  It’s much more complex than recovering a completed property which is readily saleable.

This is why not all Private Credit is the same.

 

Oncoming Credit Crunch

That is why we describe what is coming as a soft credit crunch. It is not a GFC-style freeze where money disappears overnight. Money is still available, but it is more expensive, slower and far more selective. Lenders are pulling back at the same time, redemption pressure is making some funds cautious, and borrowers who relied on easy refinancing are finding the door narrower.

 

The distinction matters because property corrections and credit crunches end differently. A property correction ends when lower prices bring buyers back. A credit crunch ends when lenders regain confidence, and that usually takes longer. Over the next twelve months, we would pay almost as much attention to debt markets as to house prices.

Defaults will rise; that is the natural consequence of this many rate rises. But default and loss are not the same thing. A senior first mortgage at a conservative loan-to-value ratio can go into default and is more likely to recover its principal in full, as a lower loan-to-value ratio gives a lender more buffer to absorb a fall in value, but recovery is never guaranteed. Loss severity depends on how the loan was structured before the stress: the LVR, the borrower’s equity, the quality of the valuation, how long enforcement takes, enforcement costs and whether there was a genuine exit.

Poorly structured credit is the risk.

What this means for investors: five questions to ask your manager

For patient, disciplined capital, a soft credit crunch is also an opportunity. When some lenders step back, good borrowers with good assets still need funding, and margins widen for those still lending. But yield should never be read without leverage, security and liquidity alongside it.

If you invest in private credit anywhere, ask your manager five questions. What is the asset? Where do I sit in the capital structure? What is the LVR? How much equity has the borrower contributed? What is the exit, a sale or just another refinance?

The Msquared difference: we lend to the borrower, not just the bricks

Those are the questions we ask ourselves on every loan.

At Msquared our approach doesn’t change with the cycle: senior first-mortgage security, conservative LVRs, disciplined valuations approach, meaningful borrower equity and a clear repayment path. In our world, boring is a compliment.

Security matters, but it is the last line of defence, not the first. At Msquared we look past the property to the person behind it. We require borrowers to have a genuine balance sheet beyond the asset we lend against. That is what gives a personal guarantee teeth: a guarantee from someone with nothing else to lose is a signature, not security. It also gives the borrower room to move in hard times, selling other assets to meet their obligations rather than handing over the keys.

We predominantly lend short-term, typically around 12 months, and every loan needs a clearly defined exit before we lend. We lend against completed property and not specialised security or land. The borrower must have a defined commercial benefit. And we lend on what a property is worth today. We rely on independent third-party valuations conducted as per our valuation policy, and we don’t lend against “highest and best use” values built on hypothetical feasibility. A value that only exists in a spreadsheet can’t repay a loan.

The era of cheap money rewarded leverage. The next era will reward discipline.

 

Paul Miron, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Msquared Capital

Sources

  1. ABC News, “Bathla Group’s collapse may be imminent as funding deadline brought forward”, 1 Sep 2026; The Adviser, “ASIC puts private credit on notice after Bathla collapse”, Sep 2026; MacroBusiness, “Bathla’s collapse ripples across private credit market”, Sep 2026. Reported debt ranges from $3.2bn to $3.6bn.
  2. Warren Hogan (EQ Economics, Economic Advisor to Judo Bank), “Australian Economic Outlook 2027: The Great Transformation”, presentation at the Msquared Capital investor evening, Sydney, 24 Sep 2026, drawing on ABS, RBA, UN, NAB, Treasury and Cotality data.
  3. World Bank, World Development Indicators, “General government final consumption expenditure (% of GDP) – Australia” (via YCharts): 23.2% in 2025, 19.1% in 2015.
  4. Research cited in Hogan (2026): Anthropic; Clinton Free, University of Sydney; ABS; Judo Bank; EQ Economics.
  5. Reserve Bank of Australia, “Statement by the Monetary Policy Board: Monetary Policy Decision”, 29 Sep 2026.
  6. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Labour Force, Australia, August 2026 (released 24 Sep 2026).
  7. Michele Bullock, Governor, Reserve Bank of Australia, remarks at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) event, Sydney, 22 Sep 2026, as reported by CommBank Newsroom and HRD.
  8. Msquared Capital observations from valuations and sales across its lending activity, Sydney and Melbourne, Sep 2026. Indicative ranges, not an index.
  9. Cotality, Home Value Index and Monthly Housing Chart Pack, Sep 2026 (data to August 2026).
  10. ABC News, “Australia has a housing shortage. So why are Bathla and other home builders collapsing?”, 8 Sep 2026 (citing ASIC insolvency data and federal housing forecasts).
  11. ABC News, “ASIC warns of ‘first significant cracks’ in Australian private credit”, 27 Aug 2026; ASIC, Opening Statement to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, 4 Sep 2026.

Msquared Capital Pty Ltd ACN 622 507 297 AFSL 520293.

The information provided is general in nature and reflects the views of the author at the time of publication. Forward-looking information is inherently uncertain, and actual results may differ materially from projections. The information has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs, and does not constitute personal financial product advice, investment advice or a recommendation. Not an offer to invest. Investments in the Fund’s products are not bank deposits and the performance of the Fund, return of capital or payment of distributions are not guaranteed. Before making any investment decision, you should consider whether the information is appropriate to your circumstances and seek independent financial advice. Views attributed to Warren Hogan reflect his presentation on 24 September 2026, delivered on behalf of Judo Bank; Msquared Capital) has not independently verified, and does not warrant or accept liability for, the accuracy, currency or completeness of any information presented.

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