March 19, 2024

What Are Valuers Predicting For Property Markets?

Recently, real estate firm CBRE released the results of their residential valuer survey for Q1 of 2024. The results of this survey offer some valuable insights into the observations of ~190 CBRE valuers around the country. In today’s article, we’re taking a look at some of the key results, and offering some brief commentary of our own: According to CBRE’s report, 6x as many valuers are expecting ‘strong to very strong’ demand, Australia wide, as opposed to ‘soft or very limited’ demand. Valuers note also that demand has been the most significant in a few key markets, namely – Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane.
March 12, 2024

29th February 2024 – Property Market Update

The market continues to display considerable diversity across regions and cities. In the past month, overall growth was at 0.6%, up from 0.4% in January. Perth (1.8%), Adelaide (1.1%), Brisbane (0.9%) and Canberra (0.7%) outpaced this average.
March 11, 2024

When Will Interest Rates Come Down?

If you're among those seeking relief from the burden of high home loan rates, there might be a glimmer of hope on the horizon. By now, we’ve all heard that inflation has been coming down. As it stands, a return to target inflation isn’t far away, but perhaps a more pressing concern for the RBA is unemployment and productivity.
March 11, 2024

What’s Wrong With Waterfront Property Prices?

Nationwide, waterfront properties are generally worth over 60% more than inland properties, according to some estimates. And as you might expect, this premium tends to be the highest within our capital cities. For instance, waterfront properties in Sydney are, on average, worth almost double the value of inland properties – the highest waterfront premium in the world. But it isn’t just the inner cities that continue to produce a major waterfrontage premium. Tourist hubs like Byron Bay, the Mornington Peninsula, the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast or the Central Coast are all coastal hotspots for attractive lifestyle properties. In areas like these, even inland properties can feel the knock-on effects of high waterfront demand.
February 26, 2024

Can We Trust Property Market Values?

In our previous article, we explained how Hedonic Value Indices (HVIs) such as those published by CoreLogic, can measure changes in property market values, despite only a small number of houses having recent sale prices. From that article, you’ll remember that the accuracy of a HVI relies upon details about property quality – bedroom counts, bathroom counts, land size, construction date, are all things that HVIs use to better provide context for sales that have taken place. In other words, a house selling for double the local median, probably has much better features than other houses nearby. Knowing this, we don’t conclude that the value of the entire area has doubled. Since we’ve accounted for the higher quality of that property, we know it was an outlier, and we can produce a more accurate estimate of market change.
February 22, 2024

Hedonic Indices: What Investors Need to Know

If you’ve ever read a news article about Australian real estate, there’s a decent chance you’ve come across CoreLogic’s hedonic indices. These indices, published monthly, have become something of a benchmark in the industry for understanding the comparative performance of Australian property markets over time. Besides our own monthly market smart reports, even the biggest Australian publications have come to rely on these figures published by CoreLogic.
February 19, 2024

31st January 2024 – Property Market Update

The Australian housing market has carried on its upswing into 2024. National dwelling values rose 0.4% increase in January marking a consistent, year-long rise in value. As we saw towards the end of 2023, Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane have seen significant growth and continue to drive the aggregate figures as some other cities have experienced declines. Regional markets are also gaining momentum, outpacing the capital cities in value growth​​. Read on as we examine these trends more closely and discuss the important factors for investors to consider moving forward.
February 15, 2024

YIMBYism: The Movement Trying to Transform Housing

Yes, it is a silly word, but “Yes-In-My-Backyard-ism”, represents some very serious housing ideas that are rapidly gaining support in Australia and around the world. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, this article serves as a brief introduction to the movement and its beliefs. We’ll also look at what its popularity could mean for Australia, and what informed investors need to consider.
February 15, 2024

Stage 3 Tax Cuts – Good news for property?

Recently, the Labor government has announced new changes to the tax reform plan, originally legislated back in 2019 by the then Liberal government. In short, the Labor’s new changes have reduced the cut applied to high-income earners, and marginally increased the tax cut for mid and low-income earners.
January 31, 2024

What are the best leading indicators for real estate? (Part 2)

In our previous article, we discussed some of the challenges unique to real estate forecasting, defined what a lead indicator is, and explained two broad types of lead indicators. In this article, we’re looking at a few examples of the two types.