Property Investing

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.

Informational asymmetry, where one party in a transaction possesses more or superior information than the other, is a concept well-documented in economic theory. It can be a big problem, and its effect is felt uniquely within the real estate market – far more than in other asset classes like stocks, commodities or cryptocurrencies. Compared to many of these alternative investments, traded in vast quantities across highly regulated and transparent markets, with no informational lag, real estate is inherently unique.

Informational asymmetry, where one party in a transaction possesses more or superior information than the other, is a concept well-documented in economic theory. It can be a big problem, and its effect is felt uniquely within the real estate market – far more than in other asset classes like stocks, commodities or cryptocurrencies. Compared to many of these alternative investments, traded in vast quantities across highly regulated and transparent markets, with no informational lag, real estate is inherently unique.

Looking at the latest capital city property figures from CoreLogic, Australian real estate has one obvious outlier. Right now, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide remain at record high prices, while other cities like Hobart, Canberra and Melbourne are feeling the serious impact of rate hikes, still below their 2022 price peaks. However, astonishingly, Darwin remains 6.6% below its record property market, a level it hasn’t exceeded since May of 2014 – almost a decade ago!