Interviews with the 1% - Kate Hill
Hotspotting
Are you ready to take your investment journey to the next level? Look no further, because we have exciting news to share with you! We are thrilled to announce our new Hotspotting pre-recorded interviews with some of the top 1% of Australian investors who own 5 or more properties. As you may know, in the 2020-2021 financial year, only 0.87% of investors in Australia owned 5 or more investment properties. But what do these successful investors know that the majority don't? We have sat down with a number of them to get exclusive insights into their strategies, tips, and personal journeys....
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Divorce and Dollars: Managing Real Estate and Relationships with Sallyanne Hartnell
Hotspotting
Join us on this enlightening episode of the Hotspotting podcast, where host Tim Graham welcomes Sallyanne Hartnell from Reflect Coaching. An award-nominated Relationship and Divorce Coach and podcast host of "Reflect, Reclaim & Liberate," Sallyanne is on a mission to transform the divorce experience, helping couples reorganise their lives and family dynamics post-separation with dignity and less drama. In this episode, Sallyanne sheds light on why she might be the professional "no one wants, but many need." We explore the intriguing intersection of divorce and real estate, discussing how...
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Melbourne Property Growth
Hotspotting
There are numerous reasons why we think Melbourne and Victoria is worthy of consideration by property investors, notwithstanding the concerted efforts by the state government and some local councils to force investors to sell up and get as far away from Victoria as possible. Melbourne and Victoria are underpinned by one of the nation’s strongest state economies, according to CommSec’s State of the States report, and there has been a notable uplift in sales activity since the start of 2024, pointing to elevated price growth as the year unfolds. But perhaps the most compelling evidence,...
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First-Home Buyers vs. Investors in the Property Market
Hotspotting
Media loves the storyline that first-home buyers are competing with wealthy investors for properties – and losing because investors apparently have a huge advantage. Like so much that’s written and spoken in news media about the housing market, it’s a work of fiction. The polar opposite is, in fact, the truth. The biggest competition for first-home buyers in the market is not investors, but home buyers other than first-time buyers. The largest cohort in the market, at any point in time, is home buyers who already own a home, have equity in that home and are upgrading – or, in some...
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Location Reports: Your Real Estate Game-Changer!
Hotspotting
If you want to sell real estate, very often the greatest selling point is the location. If the location has … a strong diverse economy creating jobs, a steadily growing population with strong increases projected well into the future, good existing amenities and a significant spend on new infrastructure … then it has many of the credentials for capital growth. The problem for many real estate professionals - in taking advantage of growth factors like that in their location- is accessing all the key information, analysing it and then presenting it in a way that’s easily...
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Webinar Replay - Why Melbourne Makes More Sense Than Perth
Hotspotting
Want to get into a key market BEFORE prices start to take off? Feel that you may have missed the boat with media favourite Perth? In many ways, the answers to these questions are the essence of smart investing. Most property investors are herd animals, diving into markets when they read that prices have risen 15% or 20% in the past year – or 50% in the past three years. Buying in such a market means you are likely buying at – or after – the peak of the market. The smart money would have been there 2-3 years ago – and is now focused on places that are early in the growth cycle....
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Interviews with the 1% - Arjun Paliwal of InvestorKit
Hotspotting
Are you ready to take your investment journey to the next level? Look no further, because we have exciting news to share with you! We are thrilled to announce our new Hotspotting pre-recorded interviews with some of the top 1% of Australian investors who own 5 or more properties. As you may know, in the 2020-2021 financial year, only 0.87% of investors in Australia owned 5 or more investment properties. But what do these successful investors know that the majority don't? We have sat down with a number of them to get exclusive insights into their strategies, tips, and personal journeys. Our...
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Real Estate Influence on RBA
Hotspotting
Part of the obsession by economists with interest rates as the only thing that matters in the housing market is the notion that the Reserve Bank spends a large amount of time discussing the housing market before deciding what to do about interest rates. As with so many things, economists are wrong about that. One of the most popular definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result. My own definition of insanity is the average Australian economist discussing real estate. In essence, those two definitions are essentially the same thing....
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First Home Buyer Activity
Hotspotting
If you tune into news media regularly, it’s easy to form the view that the prospect of young Australians buying real estate is remote, if not impossible. There are daily headlines telling us that it takes 10 or 15 years to save a deposit, or that most young Australians have given up on home ownership and that young adults are doomed to a life-time of renting. As is so often the case with mainstream media and their love of negative sensation, the reality is quite different. First home buyers are highly active in markets across Australia. But first, let’s look at some of headlines with which...
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Home Building Costs
Hotspotting
Want to know why housing affordability is so poor in this country? The answer, in simple terms, is because the cost of building new houses is so high – ridiculously, obscenely high. The cost of building the typical house in Australia has risen 53% in the past three years – and it now costs close to half a million dollars to build that home. And that’s just the cost of the house. It doesn’t include the price of the land. Who’s to blame for this situation? Primarily, overwhelmingly, it’s government. Politicians and bureaucrats. They keep...
info_outlineAt Hotspotting we’re always on the alert for evidence of CHANGE that will influence property markets.
The great potential in residential real estate is that change is always happening, opening up new possibilities for growth.
One of our catch-cries at Hotspotting is that THE PAST DOES NOT INFORM THE FUTURE.
Poor performers of the recent past can become the nation’s leaders of the near future.
One of the biggest trends we are tracking, under the general theme of change, is the rise and rise of apartments – challenging the dominant paradigm of real estate.
That paradigm, still widely accepted in the real estate industry, states that houses always outperform units and townhouses on capital growth.
But that is undoubtedly changing.
We are seeing growing evidence that more and more buyers of various sorts are opting for attached dwellings – be they units, townhouses or apartments.
Buyer demand in locations where units dominant the dwelling mix - or are a significant part of the dwelling mix - has been rising notably for the past 12 months.
Suburbs where units dominate the dwelling mix are now among the most powerful markets in Australia – which makes our Top 10 Apartment Hotspots report essential reading for investors seeking opportunities in 2024.
Those seeking out well-located and affordable apartments include older people downsizing from a large family home.
They also include …
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young people seeking an affordable first step on the property ladder;
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lifestyle buyers seeking low-maintenance, lock-up-and-leave options in good locations;
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overseas migrants from countries where unit-style living is the norm; and
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investors seeking affordability and higher rental yields in good locations.
In inner-city precincts in our biggest cities, houses can typically cost over $2 million, but apartments can be bought in the $600,000s and $700,000s in the same suburbs in many cases.
The rental yields are also significantly higher, a key consideration in times of higher interest rates – although it needs to be remembered that apartments do entail additional costs like body corporate fees.
But the most noteworthy data relates to capital growth. In a growing number of locations throughout Australia, apartments have recorded larger increases in median prices than houses, both in the past year and over the longer term.
At Southport on the Gold Coast, apartments are considerably cheaper than houses, sell faster, have higher rental yields, have recorded bigger price growth in the past year – and the long-term capital growth rate is close to 10% per year.
There are many, many more examples like this across Australia.
So there is a significant list of good reasons why apartments are attracting growing demand from a range of buyers.
And that means that the dominant paradigm of real estate is looking decidedly shakey.