Could the weakening jobs market bring Australia closer to the end of interest rate increases, even as buyers remain cautious about property? At the same time, another fall in building approvals raises concerns about how much new housing will be available when confidence eventually returns. These forces operate over different timeframes, which helps explain why…
Property investors who owned assets before Budget night will continue to benefit from negative gearing. Therefore, most will be reluctant to sell, because if they subsequently reinvest in an established property, they will lose immediate access to those tax benefits. However, given the Melbourne property market’s significant underperformance over the past decade, investors are naturally…
In today’s evolving property market, where investors can no longer rely solely on strong capital growth, many are exploring property development as a way to manufacture equity and accelerate their wealth-building journey. And the recent federal government tax changes have made this an even more popular path for serious property investors. One of the most-read…
For twenty years, Australia’s economy has been growing. Company profits have gone up, dividends have gone up, and property values have gone up. But what if I told you that most of that growth had almost nothing to do with us getting smarter, more efficient, or more productive? What if it was really just more…
Australia’s property markets are continuing to soften, and the spring selling season has done little to restore buyer confidence, with falling prices, weaker auction clearance rates and longer selling times pointing to a market where buyers are increasingly in control. To help keep you up-to-date with all that’s happening, below is my updated weekly analysis…
Here’s something that should concern every parent and grandparent in Australia. If you were born in the late 1940s, there was a 54% chance you owned a home by your late twenties. If you were born in the early 1990s, that figure has fallen to 36%. Now that’s a significant change in how wealth gets…
Every year, one of Australia’s biggest longitudinal surveys provides a range of insights on how the nation is changing. The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, provides unique insights into the lives of Australians, and collects rich data on income, employment, health and wellbeing. HILDA has been following the same people every…
Housing has a new competitor. Australia’s rapidly expanding data-centre industry is attracting billions of dollars, demanding substantial electricity and water capacity, and drawing upon many of the same engineers, consultants, contractors and financiers needed to deliver new communities. The issue is not whether Australia should build data centres. It is whether governments are coordinating the…
If someone had sat you down in January 2020 and described what the next six and a half years would bring, I doubt you would have bought another property. A global pandemic, closed borders, the fastest rate hiking cycle in a generation, a war in Europe, bank collapses overseas, a conflict that closed the Strait…
Australia will have almost 40 million people by 2066, our economy will be more than twice as large and average real incomes will be considerably higher. Yet beneath those reassuring headline numbers, Treasury’s latest Intergenerational Report describes a country that is growing more slowly, ageing rapidly and relying heavily on migration, productivity and housing policy…
