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Media Absurdities

Hotspotting

Release Date: 12/12/2024

Approvals vs  Reality The Housing Crisis Explained show art Approvals vs Reality The Housing Crisis Explained

Hotspotting

One of the many ways media misinforms Australian consumers is their misunderstanding of the difference between building approvals and actual construction of new dwellings. Right now, at a time when we have major dwelling shortages and construction costs are so incredibly high, there is a very important distinction between the number of dwelling approvals and the number of homes actually being built. The difference between the two is quite stark and it speaks to the biggest single problem amid the housing crisis – approvals often are not translating into actual construction of homes, because...

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Why Apartments Are Booming in 2025 show art Why Apartments Are Booming in 2025

Hotspotting

The Great Australian Dream still exists, it’s just that - for many - it now means owning an apartment, not a house with a white picket fence. As property prices continue to grow, the dream of owning a freestanding house has morphed into the dream of owning an apartment - for more and more Australians. Apartment living is no longer just a financial choice, but a conscious decision to seek out a different way of living - a more affordable and low-maintenance lifestyle. The percentage of Australians who live in a freestanding house has been declining since the beginning of the new...

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Brisbane: Australia’s Hottest Market show art Brisbane: Australia’s Hottest Market

Hotspotting

Brisbane was one of the nation’s boom markets in 2024 and likely to do even better this year.   The price data shows that Brisbane delivered a strong performance last year, both with house prices and in particular unit prices – but was third in the capital city growth rankings behind Adelaide and Perth.   Figures from PropTrack and CoreLogic show Brisbane house prices overall were up 10% last year and unit prices around 15%.   In 2025 we expect Brisbane to have another strong year and to overtake those other cities to be the national leader on price growth.  ...

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Australia’s Housing Crisis – How Did We Get Here & How Do We Fix It? | The Property Playbook show art Australia’s Housing Crisis – How Did We Get Here & How Do We Fix It? | The Property Playbook

Hotspotting

🏡 Australia's Housing Crisis: Causes & Solutions With housing affordability at record lows and supply failing to keep up with demand, how did Australia's property market reach this crisis point? More importantly—how do we fix it? In this special episode of The Property Playbook, Tim Graham is joined by an expert panel to tackle one of the most pressing issues facing Australian homeowners, investors, and renters: 🎙️ Panel Guests: ✅ Michael Sukkar – Federal Shadow Housing Minister ✅ Kelly Ryan – CEO of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV) ✅ Terry Ryder –...

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Mining Towns show art Mining Towns

Hotspotting

Some investors are attracted to the cheap house prices and very high rental yields in resources sector towns but recent events in two of the nation’s iconic locations demonstrate why this can be a strategy fraught with peril.   Hotspotting methodology dictates that a diverse economy is a core factor in any location we are willing to recommend – which means locations dominated by one industry sector seldom make it to our hotspots reports.   A country town solely reliant on agriculture, a coastal enclave where everything depends on tourism and mining towns are all places we shy...

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Shallow Analysis show art Shallow Analysis

Hotspotting

I sometimes despair for Australians trying to make sense of real estate markets, when the standard of analysis and commentary in news media is so poor.   Knee-jerk responses to short-term data sets from economists, journalists and often from the big-name research houses create a mass of confusing, conflicting and contradictory commentary.   The commentary around price data is the worst example of this.    For a long time, the biggest problem for consumers trying to make sense of market events has been commentators putting too much importance on short-term results. ...

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Regional QLD: 2025’s Hottest Market? show art Regional QLD: 2025’s Hottest Market?

Hotspotting

Regional Queensland had a pretty good year for price growth in 2024 but I’m predicting it will have an even better one in 2025. There’s mounting evidence that the combined weight of internal migrants moving to Queensland and investors increasingly pivoting from Western Australia to Queensland will drive significant price uplift this year. In 2024, according to PropTrack figures, the median house price for Regional Queensland increased 10%, which was well above the national average (4%), and better than our three biggest cities, but was slightly below the level of growth achieved in...

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Next $1M Suburbs Revealed! show art Next $1M Suburbs Revealed!

Hotspotting

Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, many of Australia’s property markets have experienced some extraordinary price growth. Many locations, both city-based and regional, achieved unprecedented price increases with median house and unit prices soaring as demand hit new highs. Where once a million-dollar house or unit median was unusual, that recent growth launched many locations into that club for the first time. As of January 2025, there were 1,194 suburbs or towns with a median house price or median unit price of $1 million or more – 50 more than in September 2024. These figures show...

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Chalmers vs. Landlords: Who’s Right? show art Chalmers vs. Landlords: Who’s Right?

Hotspotting

Was the Federal Treasurer being serious when he suggested that investors pass on the new interest rate cut to tenants in the form of cheaper rents? Has Jim Chalmers lost the plot completely or was he making a shallow pitch to voters on the eve of a Federal Election? To suggest that investor owners are in a position to hand out financial benefits to tenants because of this one, very small, isolated reduction in their costs suggests that Chalmers is either divorced from reality or he’s having a cheap shot at landlords to win favour with renters and maybe a few extra votes. I have to say that...

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$1 Million Homes: Australia’s Housing Crisis show art $1 Million Homes: Australia’s Housing Crisis

Hotspotting

One of the most significant housing stories in the past year has slipped under the radar of news media, with very little commentary.   The latest official data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that it now costs over $500,000 to build the average house in this country. That’s the cost of construction of the dwelling and doesn’t include the land price.   Given that the price of residential land is also escalating to record price levels, the reality is that the typical house and land package in a capital city is beyond the reach of most young buyers.   This, in...

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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 40-plus years charting Australian real estate is that there are lines and lines of idiots scrambling to be the first to declare that a boom is over, usually long before it actually is.

This is often fed by data research entities like CoreLogic where the key people never let the facts get in the way of good headline and free publicity.

So Australia has been resplendent lately with strident headlines declaring that the national property boom is over or words to that effect.

Here’s the first problem: we don’t have a national property boom so it’s rather odd to declare that something which doesn’t exist is finished.

We have certainly had a boom in Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane among the capital cities, but certainly nothing remotely resembling a boom in the other five state and territory capitals. 

It’s a similar scenario in the regional markets, with a variety of different situations ranging from downturn and stagnation to moderate growth and, in some cases, strongly rising prices.

But nationally growth in house and unit prices has averaged 6 or 7 percent throughout 2024 – and lately the annual growth rate, as a national average, has been 4 or 5 percent. Only in the fertile imaginations of media headline writers would that constitute a boom.

But, according to various media outlets, this mythical boom is over – even though the latest figures for annual growth in three of our capital cities and three of our state regional markets are still well above 10%.

The only places where the evidence suggests the boom is over are the ones where a boom never took place – like Melbourne, Hobart, Darwin and Canberra.

But not only, according to media, is the fictional national boom over, but property prices are plunging. One headline in Fairfax media claimed to reveal Why property prices are plunging across Australia – amid warning they could slide even further.

A close examination of the article underneath this startling headline discovered there was no evidence in the story to justify the headline. Quite simply, the headline was a blatant fabrication – which, sadly, is all too common in today’s news media.

The article revealed that Sydney’s median price was 0.8% lower than three months earlier but 3.3% higher than a year earlier, while Melbourne was down 1% over three months. Nothing in those figures goes even close to “prices plunging”.

In the other major cities prices were still rising and indeed were still growing at boom time rates.

House prices were also up in the Combined Regions in the latest month, the latest quarter and the past year– and unit prices were also up nationally, both in the cities and the regions.

So, there was very little sign of even minor decline in prices anywhere and certainly no evidence at all of price plunging. 

So this was yet another instance of a headline which was an outright and blatant lie.

And who wrote this rubbish? well, it was the champion of negative media about residential real estate, the endlessly sad Shane Wright who has devoted his career to writing nonsense about property markets.

But wait, there’s more. Not only is the fictional national price boom over, but apparently the rental boom is over as well!

There have been strident headlines and soundbites inferring that rents are no longer rising. 

As is so often the case with these big sweeping media statements, the claim was based on a single month’s figures from one source. Nationally, rents rose only 0.2% in November, according to CoreLogic, therefore the boom is over in the simplistic minds of attention-seeking analysts and journalists.

And, yes, once again, the source of this myopic and shallow analysis is CoreLogic, a business which publishes lots of major real estate data but is quite dreadful at analysing what it all means.

So CoreLogic’s head of research Tim Lawless said:

“At 5.3% annual growth, rents are still rising at more than twice the pre-pandemic decade average of 2.0%, but given the weak monthly change the annual trend is set to slow further from here.

“It will be interesting to see if the rate of rental growth rebounds through the seasonally strong first quarter of the year in 2025, but beyond any seasonality, it looks increasingly like the rental boom is over”.

But other sources tell a different story. SQM Research records a monthly rise of a tick under 1% as the national average for residential rents, with Adelaide up 1.1%, Perth rising 1.9% and Canberra up 1.5%.

The national vacancy rate remains a fraction above 1%, essentially unchanged from three years ago, so can anyone justify a claim that the rental shortage crisis and rising rents is all done and dusted? Hardly.

Another startling set of headlines resulted from the latest Regional Market Update from CoreLogic which declared that the highest capital growth was occurring in Queensland and WA mining towns.

I was truly perplexed because I know there has been little price growth recently in mining towns like Karratha, Port Hedland and Newman in WA and Moranbah in Queensland.

However, the headlines resulted from CoreLogic boffins – yes, it’s CoreLogic again - re-defining major regional cities as mining towns. 

Apparently Townsville, which has one of the most diverse economies in regional Australia, with only minor influence from the resources sector, is now a mining town. 

So is the key Central Queensland of Mackay, apparently, despite being 2-3 hours’ drive from the nearest coal mine.

In WA, the key regional city of Geraldton is also, apparently, a mining town, according to Core illogic, although the nearest iron ore mine is an hour’s drive away.

All of this, and a whole lot more, reinforces our view that there is more misinformation than actual information in mainstream media.

And that any real estate consumer who bases a decision on the content of media reports is at risk of making a very bad decision.