Price Data
Hotspotting
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Building Collapses
Hotspotting
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Approvals V Construction
Hotspotting
Two very different headlines have summed up the problems for Australia’s ongoing housing shortage. One of the recent media headlines declared that building approvals were at a two-year high and that things were improving for the nation’s housing shortage. The other described why building approvals are almost irrelevant – it said that project deferrals are occurring at a record rate. The reality of the current crisis is this: it doesn’t matter how many houses and apartments are approved for construction – and it doesn’t matter how many re-zonings state governments push through...
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Webinar Replay: Reflections & Projections - A Deep Dive into Real Estate Trends & Forecasts
Hotspotting
In this insightful webinar, Terry Ryder, founder of Hotspotting, and Tim Graham, Hotspotting’s General Manager, analyze the surprises and trends of 2024 in the Australian property market and share their projections for 2025. With decades of combined experience, they provide investors with actionable advice on navigating the coming year. Key Highlights 2024 in Review Defying Predictions: Despite high interest rates and inflationary pressures, property prices rose by an average of 5.53% nationally in 2024. Perth led with an astonishing 18.7% growth, followed by regional Western Australia,...
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Best Buys Result
Hotspotting
You don’t have to be super rich or invest $1 million to make big capital gains in residential real estate: you just need to follow Hotspotting’s signature report, the National Top 10 Best Buys report. Those who followed the tips in our report of a year ago could have made close to $100,000 in capital gains spending as little as $400,000 – or $180,000 in gains after investing $630,000. In December 2023 we published our National Top Best Buys reports for Summer 2023-34. Our top 10 locations for investors to consider covered a wide range of price points, from less than $300,000 and above $1...
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Listings Rise
Hotspotting
The greatest complaint heard most often in real estate across Australia is that there are plenty of buyers, but a shortage of listings. The number of properties for sale has been well short of the levels needed for a balanced market, particularly in the boom cities of Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. But that is steadily changing. According to SQM Research, total listings of properties for sale nationwide grew 7.6% in November and are now more than 10% higher than a year ago. Perhaps most significantly, there were major rises in November in those three boom cities, with the...
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Media Absurdities
Hotspotting
Things are constantly changing in real estate nationwide but the one factor that never changes is this: we can always rely on news media to distort the facts and deliver a steady flow of misinformation to Australian consumers, all in the interests of attracting readership, with little regard for accuracy, honesty or fairness. The past week or so has been chockful of media nonsense. If you can believe the headlines, the national property boom is over, house prices are plunging, the rental boom is over and the North Queensland city of Townsville is a mining town. One of the constants of my...
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2025 Predictions
Hotspotting
Rumours of the death of ‘the national property boom’ are greatly exaggerated – especially since we didn’t have a national property boom in 2024. Rather, over the past 12 months, we have seen differing market cycles in many locations - as is the usual state of play in real estate throughout Australia. Strong property price growth was recorded in Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane in 2024, but not in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Darwin or Hobart. Similarly, in the regional areas, there were declining and stagnating markets, as well as some where prices were showing good price...
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Regional Investment Boom
Hotspotting
Victoria’s real estate market is witnessing a significant shift as young first-home buyers increasingly seek affordable housing in regional areas. According to recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), first-home buyer loans in Victoria soared to 4,202 in July – the highest number in nearly two years. This surge reflects growing confidence among young buyers and a trend towards exploring housing options beyond Melbourne. Nationally, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Regional Australia Institute report that the flow of people from cities...
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Units Beat Houses
Hotspotting
Hotspotting was among the first to identify and highlight the most significant change in the Australian real estate scene – the emerging trend which we document in the quarterly editions of the report titled The Rise and Rise of Apartments., published in association with Nuestar. This trend has turned upside down the dominant paradigm in real estate, that houses out-perform apartments on capital growth. There is now growing evidence that attached dwellings are mounting a strong challenge to houses. It has long been believed that land content was the big thing in driving...
info_outlineThe markets currently attracting our focus at Hotspotting are the ones we call “the second wind markets”.
These are locations which experienced strong capital from 2020 to 2022, have been in the post-boom pause/correction phase for the past 18 months or so, and are now poised for another period of price growth.
There are few better places to find second-wind markets than Regional Victoria, as many of the key centres have exhibited that pattern over the past 3-4 years and are now showing the early signs of revival.
Many of the suburbs of Ballarat are classic examples. The median house price for Sebastopol rose from $330,000 in 2020 to $475,000 by the end of 2022. There has been a price correction in the past 18 months but market activity is rising again and another period of price growth is expected.
Eaglehawk in Ballarat rose from $325,000 in mid-2020 to $520,000 in early 2023, before the price graph evened out over the following 12-18 months.
Bendigo displays similar patterns. The suburb of California Gully had a median house price of $300,000 in 2020, rising to $465,000 late in 2022. The price graph has flatlined since then, before showing the first signs of new growth in mid-2024.
Similarly, Flora Hill lifted its median house price from $255,000 in 2020 to $450,000 in early 2023 – but the price graph has been flat over the past 12 months. Now sales activity is rising again, which is a forward indicator of impending price growth.
Other markets in Regional Victoria have this pattern, which is a common one in real estate cycles with a period of strong growth followed by a period of correction or no growth, before the market embarks on the next growth cycle.
Shepparton, Traralgon, Mildura, Wodonga, Warrnambool and many other Victoria regional centres have this pattern.
They’re all places with solid local economies and credentials for future growth.
Most of them commonly have houses in the $400,000s and $500,000s, with low vacancy rates, so they present attractive features for property investors.