Inflation continues to decline The ABS released the latest monthly inflation figures, which dropped from 5.4 per cent in June to 4.9 per cent in July. This is of course now a long way down from the peak of 8.4 per cent in December as supply chains and the labour supply normalise. The most significant…
Articles by Pete Wargent
Pete is a Chartered Accountant, Chartered Secretary and has a Financial Planning Diploma. Using a long term approach to building businesses, investing in equities, & owning a portfolio he achieved financial independence at the age of 33. Visit his blog
China’s real estate market is the second largest asset class in the world, and it’s coming severe pressure with prices falling and developers failing. China’s second largest real estate developer has crashed into filing for Chapter 15 insolvency in New York under the weight of the group’s $468 billion of liabilities. The developer has been…
There was a change to working regulations effective 1 July, reinstating the restrictions on student visa holders to a 48-hour working week. As such, some economists anticipated a +40,000 increase in the number of persons employed in July, as workers jostle for the newly freed up positions. It didn’t quite work out that way in…
There’s a lot of noise about building in the pipeline, and dwellings ‘under construction’, but of course many projects have been stalled, mothballed, or delayed, and every day there’s a news story about another developer or building firm facing insolvency (three more in the past two days). Overall, residential building activity, as measured in volume…
Millionaire migration accelerates! There was an old real estate quote about finding out where the people are moving to and buying the land before they get there. Where are the world’s High Net Worth Individuals moving to in 2023? Australia, that’s where. Via New World Wealth, Henley Global tracks the most up-to-date and timely available…
I sometimes get so engrossed in analysing ABS figures, like the nerdy CA that I am, that I forget that some blog readers are new to the idea of property as an investment. Let’s take a look today at 6 of the basic characteristics of a property as an investment and what causes prices to…
Building approvals continued to crash in April, with unit approvals soft all year in Sydney and Melbourne. Unit approvals were -35 per cent lower than a year ago, with Sydney and Melbourne leading the plunge. House approvals are also declining across the board, with only the strong Adelaide market holding the line. Overall, building approvals…
Retail turnover fell slightly to a seasonally adjusted $35.26 billion in April. These numbers don’t look too bad, but don’t forget retail prices are higher than a year ago, and we need to look at these figures in the context of blazing population growth, with the Aussie population projected to surge past 26½ million this weekend. Retail volumes are therefore correspondingly…
CBRE extrapolated in a report insight that Australia’s population will grow by around 4.43 million over the next decade, following a pause in immigration through the international border closures period. This will represent an increase in the Aussie population of well over +15 per cent over the decade, driving significant demand for housing, with most…
Employed significantly missed expectations in April, declining by -4,300, partly reversing the strong gains of the previous month. Full-time employment gave back -27,100 jobs in April. The number of unemployed persons increased +18,400 to 528,000, the highest in 11 months. This was enough to take the unemployment rate up from 3.5 per cent to 3.7…