New survey shows homebuyer and property investor confidence still strong, with the big stumbling blocks being flat property prices, finance and economic uncertainty.

Metropole Property Strategists recent online survey of close to 2,200 home owners, investors and would be investors from around Australia found that 17% plan to buy a new home and 59% plan to buy an investment property in the next year, even though they didn’t expect significant growth in property values.

A sign of the changing market sentiment is that 43% of respondents expect property prices to fall over the year compared to only 27% expecting a fall 6 months ago.

CEO of Metropole, Michael Yardney said, “The message from this survey is that despite all the negative sentiment, many Australians are still keen to take advantage of the current market and buy their first home, upgrade their current home or buy an investment property. And they’re willing to make sacrifices to ensure this happens.”

“What this clearly shows that despite the economic uncertainty, falling property values, concerns about interest rates and affordability, many Australians are still confident to put their money into property. However, investors are more nervous than they were when we surveyed them earlier in the year when 64% of respondents planned to invest in property in the next 12 months.”

Their biggest concerns are obtaining finance 28% (33% 6 months ago), economic uncertainty 25% (21% 6 months ago) and negative cash flow 24% (23%)

“They see the current buyer’s market as a time of opportunity, even though they do not expect property values to rise strongly this year. More than half think there will be little (20%) or no growth (34%) in property values over the next year.

“28% of respondents believe Sydney will offer the best capital growth in the next 2 years, 23% would put their money in the Melbourne property markets and 16% believe Brisbane is where to invest.

Other key national results

• Buying a new home: 31% of the respondents were planning to buy a new home in the next year (18% 6 months ago.)
• Expectations for property prices over the year:  34% of respondents are expecting property prices to remain steady over the next year and 28% expected prices to fall up to 5% over the year (16% 6 months ago.) Only 20% expected property prices to increase a little (0-5%)
• Best place to invest: 28% of respondents thought Sydney would show the best capital growth in the next 2 years while 23% thought Melbourne would exhibit the best capital growth. This was followed by 16% choosing Brisbane. Very few thought Perth (9%), Adelaide (5%) or mining towns (7%) and regional Australia (7%) would show good capital growth
• Concerns: The top three concerns about buying another investment property were ‘obtaining finance’ (28%), followed by ‘uncertainty in the market’ (25%) and ‘managing negative cash flow’ (24%)
• Sacrifices: A large number of respondents are prepared to make sacrifices in order to get into property. These include: Cutting back on general day to day spending, eating out less and cutting back on take away food or alcohol, delay a holiday or a vehicle purchase, purchase a less expensive property or taking on an additional jobs

Key statistics, tables and graphs available in the PDF.