A Forced Autoregressive Model of Australian Residential Property Price Dynamics: Credit, Migration, Monetary Policy, and Supply Interactions 2003-2026

Research Question/Issue: How do credit, migration, monetary policy, construction, and wages interact to drive Australian residential property price growth, and at what speeds do they transmit? Research Findings/Insights: A forced AR(2) model with six macroeconomic drivers achieves adjusted R2 = 0.918 against the national median of year-on-year price growth across approximately 7,200 suburban markets (2003-2026). Credit acceleration is the dominant driver. Migration operates with a 3-year lag that matches the settlement-to-ownership pipeline. Residential approvals show a sign reversal: positive contemporaneously (demand signal) and negative at a 2-year lag (supply arrival). Granger causality tests conrm credit and migration as exogenous; wages and the cash rate respond to the property cycle rather than causing it.Practitioner/Policy Implications: The framework allows year-by-year attribution of price growth to specic macroeconomic forces. That credit acceleration dominates has clear relevance for macroprudential policy design. The 3-year migration lag suggests