Many believed that recurring lockdowns and working from home restrictions would lead to a baby boom, but it’s not in sight – yet. John Lindeman explains why, and what’s around the corner. It seems natural that periodically locking down couples at home and closing public entertainment and recreation facilities would lead to more babies being…
The closing of our national borders to overseas arrivals is impacting population growth in some States and Territories but is also causing cash flow booms for property investors in others. It’s understandable that much of the focus on international border closures caused by the pandemic has been negative because lower population growth ultimately means less…
High price growth often motivates investors to buy properties in the expectation that the growth will continue or even escalate, so are investors about to jump on board and turn this boom into a price bubble? Although the number of investors in the property market is growing, the percentage of investors buying property is around…
The fear of missing out is one of our most powerful survival instincts, but in our modern societies often leads to seemingly irrational behaviour. Remember those crazy supermarket scenes early last year as people stampeded and fought each other to buy a few rolls of toilet paper? More recently it’s been happening in the property…
It was widely expected that last year’s lockdowns, social distancing, and working from home rules would motivate many people to seek refuge in clean, green, covid free and more affordable regional areas. The latest housing market figures from CoreLogic (for March 2021) however, show that this exodus has not occurred. For the first time in…
Early last year the banks, economists and other analysts were wringing their hands, predicting economic gloom and claiming that our property markets were about to crash. Analysts and economists often rely on past performance to help them make predictions, so when the pandemic hit our shores, they scoured the history books to check what had…
There are many explanations for the current housing market boom, such as lower interest rates, relaxed borrowing rules, buyer grants, building incentives, stamp duty waivers and tax cuts. But while these have all contributed in some way to the rise in buyer demand, they don’t explain the dramatic increase in the number of potential buyers,…
Warren Buffet has just two rules that investors must follow to ensure success. His first rule is Never lose money and the second is Never forget the first rule. So how can investors use this wisdom to profit in the current market? It would seem that getting into a growth market is the best way to avoid losing…
Some experts are claiming that our property markets are heading for a boom, while others are warning that we could soon be in a price bubble about to bust. There’s a huge difference between property booms and price bubbles. Bubbles invariably bust and when they do, housing prices end up much lower than where they…
Our property markets ended the year strongly, with buyer demand pushing prices up almost everywhere as home buyers respond to lower borrowing costs and repayment buffers, plus grants, incentives and stamp duty waivers. Not only are these easier and cheaper borrowing conditions encouraging more buyers to enter the market, but they also give buyers more…