Latest Australian Property Markets News and Forecasts
2023 was a year of change and uncertainty for the Australian property markets.
But despite stories of doom and gloom delivered by the media, and the general negative consumer sentiment our housing markets managed to defy the expectations of many of the commentators and rather than receding, property values grew for 11 consecutive months around Australia.
And rather than falling into a recession, our economy confounded the Reserve Bank by bounding along as jobs kept getting created and unemployment hovered around record lows.
A lot of this had to do with our booming population growth.
Australia’s population growth has rocketed back to the boom rates of the mid-1950s, increasing by 2.4 per cent in the 12 months to June according to the latest figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
A record half million-plus net influx of foreign students, workers and permanent settlers came to these shores, with net overseas migration adding 518,100 people, an increase of more than 150 per cent on the previous year and the highest nominal inflow ever recorded.
In today’s Property Insider chat, Dr Andrew Wilson discusses this plus the most recent economic and property data.
Our labour Markets are booming
Sure increased mortgage costs and the high cost of living are hurting many Australians’ budgets, but despite all the interest rate rises our economy is still strong with employment surging as 61,000 new jobs were created in November.
Watch this week’s Property Insider video as Dr. Andrew Wilson explains how despite strong employment numbers, the unemployment rate rose to 3.9% from an upwardly revised 3.8%.
There was also a jump in participation to a new record high of 67.2%, from 67.0%.
Part-time employment has been an increasing driver of employment gains in recent months, though gains were concentrated in full-time in November.
Falling oil prices are good for inflation
Watch this week’s Property Insider video as Dr Andrew Wilson explains how Australia’s inflation rate is very much tied to the international price of oil.
And it’s much, much more than just the cost of petrol at the bowser for you and me to fill up our petrol tanks.
The price of oil affects transportation costs and the end cost of most goods we buy.
The following chart shows how oil prices are dropping and that’s likely to be good for our inflation figures moving forward.
Australia’s population boom
Australia’s population growth has rocketed back to the boom rates of the mid-1950s, increasing by 2.4 per cent in the 12 months to June according to the latest figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
A record half million-plus net influx of foreign students, workers and permanent settlers came to these shores.
Net overseas migration added 518,100, an increase of more than 150 per cent on the previous year and the highest nominal inflow ever recorded.
At 30 June 2023, our population was 26.6 million people, an increase of 624,100 people over the year.
Putting that in perspective it’s like adding one and a half Canberra’s to our population with the need for all the accommodation, services, infrastructure and schools.
And this is at a time when construction of new dwellings is slumping.
Watch this week’s Property Insiders video as we explain how this means we’ll be experiencing a housing shortage not just for 2024, but also for a number of years to come.
Immigrants from overseas predominantly move to NSW and Victoria.
In recent times we’ve seen a return to living in our capital city rather than regional towns.
And the exodus from Victoria seen in 2020 and 2021 has now ended, yet Queensland and Western Australia continued to attract the most net interstate migrants over the last financial year.
Solid end to a strong year for auction markets
The final auction weekend for 2023 has produced generally solid clearance rates in most capitals despite another big end-of-year day of Saturday listings.
Adelaide had the strongest auction clearance rate of 69.0%.
Auction clearance results for the other capitals were:- Melbourne – 64.7%; Sydney – 66.2%; Brisbane – 35.5% and Canberra – 58.1%.
The national auction market reported a clearance rate of 58.7% at the weekend which was lower than the 61.5% reported over the previous weekend – and also marginally lower than the 60.9% recorded over the same weekend last year.
Capital city weekend auction markets have concluded 2023 with more generally positive results and are poised to resume activity with solid momentum after the holiday break in 6 weeks’ time.
