Buying New v Buying Established Webinar Replay
Hotspotting
Everyone seeking real estate in desirable locations has the same complaint: the lack of stock. Home buyers, investors, buyers’ agents and selling agents are all being frustrated by the shortage of listings of properties for sale – particularly quality options. Leading national buyers’ agency Adviseable says a partial solution for buyers is to consider building from scratch rather than buying an established property. The tactic has many advantages – and one or two problems as well. Alex Dutt of Adviseable says deciding whether to buy an established property or to go down the new...
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Think Twice: Negative Gearing Myths
Hotspotting
In my experience, most people who have a loud view about scrapping negative gearing are people who can’t explain what it is, how it works, why it’s bad and how ending it would solve all the problems in the housing industry. Mostly, what’s in play with this issue is THE POLITICS OF ENVY – that nagging feeling some people have, that others are doing better than they are, or are receiving benefits that they are not, and therefore need to be squashed. As a famous Indian guru once observed, some people try to be tall by cutting off the heads of others. Contrast that with the views that are...
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Rising Rents, Real Reason
Hotspotting
Politicians and journalists love to scapegoat and demonise, particularly with issues impacting housing markets – with property investors always a popular target. Australia’s love of scapegoating is one of the reasons the nation seldom resolves any of the key issues it faces. Politicians hold press conferences, they stage inquiries, they bring on royal commissions, they make announcements – but the recurring theme is looking for someone to blame and to vilify – preferably someone other than themselves. In real estate, investors and related issues like negative gearing are blamed for all...
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Rental Crisis Deepens
Hotspotting
How long could we reasonably expect governments to take, to sort out a problem like the rental shortage? I ask the question because we have had the problem of a shortage of options for tenants in Australia – and the consequent steep rises in rents - for a very long time. And it keeps getting worse, not better. The latest data from SQM Research shows that, nationally, the vacancy rate got a little worse last month, dropping from 1.3% in August to 1.2% in September. Three of our capital cities have vacancies well below 1%. And in six of the eight capital cities, vacancies stayed the same...
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Stop the Distraction: Negative Gearing Isn’t the Real Issue
Hotspotting
There is one thing that Australian politicians are really good at – possibly the only thing - and that is diverting attention from the real issues and scapegoating others for the problems that they, the politicians, have caused. Right now, the core issues impacting Australian households include the housing shortage, the high cost of creating desperately needed new homes, the chronic rental shortage and the reality that rents keep on rising. It’s noteworthy that the recent AGM of the Commonwealth Bank reported that they have had to provide emergency payment arrangements to 132,000 customers...
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Albo's Housing Hypocrisy
Hotspotting
Australia is struggling with a number of crisis situations – a cost-of-living crisis, a housing affordability crisis and a rental shortage crisis. Our beloved Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declared on many occasions how much he cares about the plight of ordinary Australians in dealing with these issues. But, as the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words – and that is particularly relevant to our elected representatives who love to stand before the media cameras and declare their concern for the people but fail to match their words with appropriate actions. So, let’s look...
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Why Affordable Outshines Prime in Real Estate
Hotspotting
Residential real estate abounds with fallacies and misconceptions, mostly created by dishonest politicians, biased journalists and economists who don’t understand property. One of the biggest is the one that claims that so-called prime property shows the best capital growth. A year ago I attended a national conference for real estate professionals at which a keynote speaker expressed the view that you had to buy “prime” to get good capital growth – and indeed proclaimed that if you couldn’t buy prestige property you shouldn’t buy at all – or at least wait until you could afford...
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Politicians Are Making Aussie Homes Unaffordable—Here’s How
Hotspotting
There’s endless commentary about housing affordability in Australia but very little awareness that the fundamental issue is the high cost of creating new homes – and that our politicians are the cause of the problem. The value of dwellings across the nation is underpinned by the cost in building new ones – and, in Australia, that cost is incredibly, ridiculously high. And it’s high because of the policies of our elected representatives, at all levels of government, but particularly state government politicians. Right now, after massive increases in building costs in recent years, you...
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Is Population Growth Misleading for Property Investors?
Hotspotting
How relevant is population growth data for people choosing where to buy? According to the theories espoused by some, the best places to buy are the ones with the highest population growth. But the evidence suggests otherwise. For example, take a look at the latest data on population growth across Australia, published by the ABS recently. It shows that one of the states with the highest population growth has been one of the worst performers recently on price growth, while one of the states with the lowest population growth has been one of Australia’s best performers on price growth. For the...
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Home Approvals Drop as Australia Faces Housing Shortage
Hotspotting
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data has recorded a decline in the number of dwelling approvals across the country. Total dwelling approvals saw a drop of 6.1 per cent in the month of August, at a time when Australia needs to be building a lot more homes. According to ABS head of construction statistics, Daniel Rossi, private dwellings excluding houses were the main contributor to the decline – in other words, there has been a big decrease in approvals for attached dwellings like units and townhouses. This has resulted in a 16.5 per cent fall in approvals for those types of...
info_outlineResidential real estate abounds with fallacies and misconceptions, mostly created by dishonest politicians, biased journalists and economists who don’t understand property.
One of the biggest is the one that claims that so-called prime property shows the best capital growth.
A year ago I attended a national conference for real estate professionals at which a keynote speaker expressed the view that you had to buy “prime” to get good capital growth – and indeed proclaimed that if you couldn’t buy prestige property you shouldn’t buy at all – or at least wait until you could afford something in the higher price ranges.
I had to challenge that view in question time because everything I’ve observed over four decades in real estate research absolutely contradicts this notion.
I was astounded that something presented as a real estate expert could make such an unsupportable claim and give such terribly bad advice.
It’s amazing how many people still cling to this out-dated and plainly inaccurate view of real estate, which is emphatically contradicted by all the evidence.
Many still believe that prime out-performs affordable, that the closer to the CBD the stronger the capital growth, that capital cities outdo the regions, and that the biggest cities show better growth over time that the smaller ones.
All of those opinions are fallacies. They’re just plain wrong.
Whether you examine the past quarter, the past year, the past three years, the past decade or the past 20 years, you will find compelling evidence that the regions have outperformed the capital cities, that the biggest cities have under-achieved, that affordable areas have excelled on capital growth – and that proximity to the CBD is utterly irrelevant in real estate investment.
And you can add another misconception that increasingly is being proven wrong – the one that says houses on land show better capital growth than apartments.
An example of what the research shows is provided by PropTrack which earlier this year examined how much dwelling values had grown in the four years since Covid disrupted property markets.
The leading jurisdictions for price growth were, in order, Regional Queensland, Regional SA, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth.
The bottom ranking markets among the capital cities and state regional markets were Sydney and Melbourne.
PropTrack also looked the local markets with the highest growth over that four-year period and found that all of the Top 10 locations were regional or outer-ring areas of the smaller capital cities. The cheaper areas of Adelaide and Brisbane were most prominent for high capital growth, as well as regional areas of Queensland and South Australia.
Now, all of that is good news for most people approaching property investment who can’t afford to buy in those higher price brackets – because it means you don’t need to buy expensive homes to do well in real estate.
The typical investor I encounter wants to buy a property below $500,000 because they can’t afford to go higher.
The really good news is that buying affordable real estate in good locations is a win-win-win situation: a lower buy-in price, a higher rental yield and good prospects for capital growth.
We call this kind of real estate The Cheapies with Prospects.
Let me give you just one example of how Cheapies with Prospects locations can deliver the most spectacular capital growth.
Many times in the past few years I have made the observation that the cheapest houses in capital city Australia were located in the affordable northern suburbs of Adelaide – specifically in the local government area of Playford.
A few years ago many suburbs had median house prices in the $200,000s – and , let’s face it, this was seriously downmarket real estate.
In the past 12 months these suburbs have delivered extraordinary capital growth.
Most suburbs in the City of Playford have grown more than 20% in the past 12 months, seven suburbs which have lifted over 30% - including Elizabeth North up 33%, Eyre up 38%, Davoren Park up 41% and Elizabeth South up 55%.
In Davoren Park, the median house price three years ago was just $190,000 and now it’s $460,000. Typical houses in Elizabeth North cost $195,000 three years ago and now they’re $425,000.
There’s been similar spectacular price rises right throughout this precinct in the affordable north of Adelaide.
Keep those figures in mind next time someone tells you that you have to buy expensive houses in prestige areas to get the best capital growth.