Economic updates

If you could live anywhere, where would it be? For the world’s wealthy, Australia is a top pick.

Early on in the upturn there was a lot of talk about the return of price growth being a “dead cat bounce”.

Like most people in the property industry, I was dismayed that a key revenue item in the recent Victorian budget was to increase land tax payments for investment properties.

Regional Australia was the standout during the pandemic with the virus sparking the greatest movement of people to these parts of Australia ever recorded.

It isn’t a bad time to be a first home buyer at the moment.

In April, new listings were down 17.1 per cent with Sydney and Melbourne seeing the biggest falls.

As interest rates have risen, the popularity of fixing interest rates has not surprisingly waned.

In February, over 140,000 foreign students returned to Australia and the number of students arriving on temporary student visas is slowly returning to pre-pandemic levels.

Recovery in prices for established homes has taken a lot of people by surprise but highlights that market dynamics aren’t purely driven by interest rates.

It isn’t often you would get a bargain (relatively) in the Sydney suburb of Mosman but the end of 2022 would have been your moment.

Population growth and a housing shortage are both now outweighing increases in the cost of finance with Australian house prices having increased by another 0.5 per cent in March.

There are four ways to predict interest rate changes.