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...
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Why a Buyer’s Agent Is a Game-Changer for Property Investors | Featuring Chris Graham
Hotspotting
Thinking of buying property on your own? 🏡 In this episode of The Property Playbook, host Terry Ryder is joined by Chris Graham, Senior Property Advisor at Australian Hotspot Advocacy, to explore why engaging a buyer’s agent could be the key to securing your next winning investment. What You'll Learn: What a buyer’s agent does and how they work exclusively for the buyer’s interests. The value of off-market properties and how buyer’s agents can provide access. Why having a professional on your team ensures due diligence and avoids costly mistakes. How to identify a trustworthy...
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Melbourne Market Myths
Hotspotting
Melbourne’s property market remains the great under-achiever of the nation but that may be about to change. A number of key indicators suggest better performance by the Melbourne property market is imminent. One pointer to better times is the latest Property Sentiment survey by API magazine, which recorded a major turnaround in investor attitudes towards the Victorian property market. The survey asked: Which state or territory do you regard as having the best property investment prospects for the next 12 months? Mid-year Melbourne and Victoria attracted only 8.6...
info_outlineThe biggest paradigm-changing trend in Australian real estate, the rise and rise of apartments, is confirmed by the latest price data from the usual suspects – and is reflected in our choices for the latest edition of our most popular report, the National Top 10 Best Buys report.
The latest price data from CoreLogic shows that unit prices are rising faster than house prices.
While news media, in its predictable fashion, focussed on the perceived negatives in the CoreLogic Home Value Index published in October, my analysis of the figures is that they provide further evidence that rising demand for attached dwellings is creating out-performance on price growth.
Perth still leads on growth in house prices, but the numbers for growth in unit prices are considerably stronger, both for the past month, the past quarter and the year to date.
According to CoreLogic, Perth prices rose 1.6% in September for houses but 2% for units.
In the September quarter, Perth house prices increased 4.6% but unit prices were up 6.2%.
And, for the first nine months of 2024, house prices are up 17% but unit prices more than 20%.
It’s the same for one of the other hot city markets, Adelaide.
House prices in Adelaide has recorded strong rises in the month of September, the September Quarter and the year to date, but unit prices have increased more in each of those time frames.
The price outcomes are even more emphatic in Brisbane: house prices rose 2.4% in the September Quarter, but unit prices rose 4.8%, exactly twice as much. And the year to date growth numbers are 10% for houses but 14% for units.
In both Sydney and Melbourne, which have not been matching the smaller cities on growth, the numbers are nevertheless stronger for units than for houses.
And nationally, median prices grew 0.4% for houses but 0.6% for units in September, while in the September Quarter houses were up 1% but units 1.2%.
The differential is greatest in the Combined Regional markets, with units outperforming houses in the month, the quarter, the year to date and in the past 12 months.
And that holds true for most of the individual state regional markets, notably Western Australia, New South Wales and South Australia. In Regional Queensland, where many regional cities have highly active markets, the numbers are fairly even.
Overall, these numbers are the latest piece of evidence that the old paradigm of real estate, that houses always outperform units on capital growth, is changing and in many locations HAS changed.
As we comment in the report we recently published with marketing company Nuestar, the one we call The Rise and Rise of Apartments, there is growing buyer demand for attached dwellings across Australia.
Units now accounts for more than half of all sales in the Sydney market and they have a growing market share in Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra as well.
In the booming Perth market, where houses are no longer the cheapest in capital city Australia following massive price growth recently, more and more buyers are pivoting to the more affordable and often better located unit products in the market.
And now this compelling trend in national real estate is a big influence on our choices to the nominated locations for the new edition of the National Top 10 Best Buys.
Many of the nation’s strongest locations for unit demand are prominent in this report – as well as some of the most vibrant house markets in key locations across Australia.