Hotspotting

Rubbish List

Media misinformation is the scourge of real estate consumers everywhere. And nowhere is the problem of rubbish in newspapers and other media more vivid than when they publish lists of the top suburbs for real estate performers across Australia. Invariably, these lists are bogus because they’re made up of locations that make the list because of statistical aberrations. Journalists love their lists – they’re a really easy headline, like “The Top 20 places for capital growth in 2023” – an...

Nothing Extraordinary

A number of commentators and analysts have labelled 2023 as an “extraordinary” year in real estate. One called 2023 “the year that surprised everyone”. Who are these people? They’re the economists (like the ones who work for the big banks and for organisations like CoreLogic and AMP Capital) who got it wrong with their forecasts on what property prices would do this year. And rather than admit their mistake – and indeed their ongoing incompetence in this area – they have tried to write...

Population Growth

Overseas migrants coming into Australia have NOT caused the rental shortage crisis, as some have claimed, but they are certainly adding to the problem. The latest population data from the ABS suggests Australia in FY2023 experienced its biggest one-year jump in population, fuelled by a record 518,100 new migrants calling the country home. And that has prompted warnings that the nation’s rental market will remain under pressure for years. The population swelled by 624,100 in 2022-23 – t...

Reflections & Projections

Are you struggling to navigate the unpredictable real estate market? Confused about where to invest in 2024? Look no further! Our recent webinar is here to provide you with the solutions you need. Listen to our recent webinar "Reflections & Projections: A Year in Review and a Look to 2024 in Real Estate", where our guest speakers Terry Ryder and Tim Graham share their expertise and insights. They address the biggest challenges faced by property investors and provide valuable strategies...

National Top 10 Best Buys 2024 Edition

Price Predictor Index (Summer Edition)

The new Summer edition of The Price Predictor Index shows that residential real estate in 2023 has defied the dire predictions of economists and commentators who told us that house prices would drop at least 15% because interest rates were rising. Sales activity and prices have become stronger as the year has evolved. Our analysis shows that markets throughout the nation are overwhelmingly upbeat: 71% of suburbs have positive sales activity trends, led by the 31% of locations which we clas...

RBA Arrogance

Australian politicians are notable for their arrogance and the degree to which they are out of touch with the concerns and problems of ordinary citizens. But if there’s a cohort that’s even more so, it’s powerful bureaucrats. There’s an extra layer of disdain and arrogance with bureaucrats like the boffins at the Reserve Bank or the Australian Taxation Office, because they’re not accountable to the Australian people. They’re appointed rather than elected, and they can enjoy exercising ...

Negative Forecasts

There are lots of negative forecasts in news media about property prices in 2024, but if you own real estate or are planning to get into the market, do not be alarmed. At this time EVERY year, media is awash for pessimistic forecasts for real estate prices. And most of the time they are proven wrong by subsequent outcomes. Remember when Covid struck early in 2020? Media reports abounded with forecasts that house prices would collapse. But they didn’t – prices rose in 2020. At the s...

Brisbane Market

The Greater Brisbane market has gone to another level with its recent recovery, following a major surge in the number of suburbs with positive rankings. We’ve just completed our latest quarterly survey of sales activity for Brisbane and it reveals that there are now 83 suburbs ranked as rising markets, compared with 38 three months ago and just 12 six months ago.  It’s the highest number since mid-2022. This represents a notable turnaround from the situation recorded in our Winter 2023...

Regional Queensland

There has been dramatic surge in buyer activity in Regional Queensland, converting the recovery we recorded three months ago into a potential boom market.   The number of locations with rising markets has increased significantly, while locations with negative trends have decreased.   Three months ago in the Spring 2023 edition of the Price Predictor Index we commented that    Regional Queensland had emphatically joined the comeback theme which dominated national property markets,...

Victoria

Anyone who wants to understand why we have a shortage of housing, with rising prices and in particular rising rents, should make a study of the state of Victoria.   While all states and territories have contributed to the discouragement of new home building and especially to investors who provide the bulk of the rental housing, nowhere has been more prolific and emphatic in telling investors to stay away than Victoria.   Dictator Daniel Andrews was in a class of his own when it comes...

How to be part of the 1% in 2024

What distinguishes the 1% of property investors who have a successful property portfolio from the 99% who don't?   According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, less than 1% of Australian investors have 5 or more properties.   But why is that?   Would you like to position yourself to be one of the few in the 1%?   Join us for a thought-provoking webinar with renowned property expert Terry Ryder and successful investor Tim Graham as they reveal the secrets to becoming part...

Politicians Making Inflation Worse

We elect politicians to fix problems and make people’s lives better. But increasingly our elected representatives are doing the opposite. They’re creating new problems, exacerbating existing ones and failing to find solutions to any of the pressing issues. The biggest issues facing most Australian households right now – according to the surveys - are the cost of living and rising accommodation costs. Soaring prices for petrol, electricity and food are a major burden for many famili...

Major Price Boom Coming

Are we on the cusp of another substantial rise in real estate values? One of Australia’s best real estate analysts believes we are. Simon Pressley, head of research at Propertyology and one of the best property market analysts in the nation, says Australia is just weeks away from the start of what he calls “an intense surge in housing values”. Before I describe his rationale, let me say that Simon Pressley is right with his forecasts more often than most in Australia – and is infini...

Renting And Health

We know that renting can be bad for your financial health, but a new study has revealed that renting is also bad for your physical wellbeing. According to the study, people who rent age faster than people who own their homes. It also indicates that renting is worse for your health than smoking and unemployment. The study was conducted jointly by the University of Adelaide and the University of Essex in the UK and took a sample of 1,420 adults – comparing the impact of various housing...

Banks Incentive For Investors

It’s quite unusual to see major lenders doing something proactive to encourage investors. Generally the big banks, along with all levels of government, treat property investors as cash cows, with higher charges for everything compared with what home buyers are charged. That includes higher interest rates, higher insurance rates, higher council rates, higher rates of stamp duty - plus taxes that home owners don’t have to pay, like land tax and capital gains tax. There’s no justificat...

Adelaide: A Model of Consistency in Australia's Real Estate Market

The remarkable steadiness for which the Adelaide market is renowned continues, with our latest survey of market activity showing that most suburbs in the South Australian capital have busy markets and rising prices. Consistency has become the key defining feature of the Adelaide market. Our Spring survey found that while there are relatively few suburbs classified as rising markets in Adelaide, there are large numbers of consistency suburbs – with steady sales levels over the past fe...

Webinar Replay - Creating a Passive Income Through Property Investment w Chris Chrisofi

Amazon #1 Best Selling Author in Property Investment & Finance Categories   Do you want to learn the secrets of generating passive income through property investment?   Catch this free webinar replay, hosted by Tim Graham of Hotspotting.com.au and featuring special guest, Chris Christofi.   Chris Christofi, founder of Reventon - a leading property investment company, and best-selling author of "Your Path to Wealth – Brick by Brick", shares his insights and strategies on creating...

Webinar - Making Super REALLY Work For You With Property - w Andrew Courtney - Plenitude Wealth

Superannuation has the potential to become a powerful tax haven and wealth creator for Australians, if handled well.   Investment expert Andrew Courtney of Plenitude Wealth says many Australians, however, fall into the trap of being asset rich and cashflow poor with their investments. But he says it’s possible to transition from active income (salary) to portfolio income (earning from your portfolio of investments, including real estate). “Instead of trading your time for money, get your...

Rising Interest Rates

Somehow, according to the logic of the major economists, including those who work for the Reserve Bank, we may need to put up interest rates again to quell key inflationary pressures like residential rents and petrol prices. As most of you will know, the Reserve Bank is obsessed with bringing down the rate of inflation. And they’ve searched through their list of policies and possibilities – and come up with the brilliant concept that, if you increase the interest rates of one third o...

Residential Vacancy Rates

You may be tired of hearing about it, but the latest data on residential vacancy rates shows that they are continuing to fall. And why wouldn’t they, given that the nation’s gaggle of politicians collectively haven’t got a clue about how to deal with this situation. The latest data from SQM Research shows that the national vacancy rate dropped from 1.2% in August to 1.1% in September. Comparing the situation with a year ago, Sydney’s vacancy rate has dropped from 1.5% to 1.3% and M...

2023 Australian Property Price Forecasts

Some of the nation’s leading economists have just released their forecasts for Australian property prices in 2023.  Now, I imagine you think I’ve made a mistake and that I meant to says that they’ve made their predictions for property prices next year, in 2024.  But No, they’ve made their forecasts for house prices in Australia this year – in late October. A little over two months before the end of the year, they’re telling us what they expect to happen with property prices in 2023. T...

The Myth of the Mortgage Cliff

It’s a reality of modern life that most of the impending disasters forecast by news media never happen – and that is particularly so in the property industry. Recent years have been full of startling headlines of a collapse of property prices, including in 2020 when Covid struck Australia and at the beginning of 2023 when bank economists predicted prices would drop 15% to 20% because interest rates were rising. Journalists love these kinds of “impending doom” stories and are happy to ...

The Exodus Continues

Australia has just recorded its highest population growth in 20 years. And the data about which areas of the nation are growing the fastest shows that the trend we call the Exodus to Affordable Lifestyle is continuing strongly. Western Australia and Queensland continue to be national leaders on price growth, while the two biggest states on population, NSW and Victoria, continue to lose population through internal migration – which means people moving from one part of Australia to another...

Riding the Wave: The Perfect Storm for Property Investors and Real Estate Growth

Usually the term “a perfect storm” refers to a highly negative scenario. One definition says a perfect storm is “an especially bad situation caused by a combination of unfavourable circumstances”. I’d like to turn that around, because right now there’s a perfect storm of scenarios impacting real estate market and they’re overwhelmingly favourable for property investors and for real estate growth, while being extremely unfavourable for anyone looking for a place to rent. Right now, r...

Sydney Soars: Leading the Resurgence of Australia's Property Market in 2023

Property markets across Australia have grown stronger as 2023 has progressed. And this notable resurgence has been led by Sydney, which we regard as the leading market in the nation. It is the market with the strongest data on sales activity, slightly ahead of Perth, and it’s also a national leader of price growth in 2023, both for houses and for apartments. Sydney had shown signs of recovery early in 2023 but our most recent analysis shows that the city’s market has gone to an...

Reviving Regional NSW

Regional NSW is part of the emerging recovery theme which dominates the national real estate scene, although its revival is perhaps a little less emphatic than some of the other states. Earlier in the year, when Hotspotting conducted its Winter survey of sales activity, only a third of Regional NSW locations had positive outcomes. But more recently our Spring survey revealed that two-thirds of locations had positive rankings. This represents a meaningful turnaround in the Regio...

How to find the most affordable investment Hotspots in 2023 with Terry Ryder & Tim Graham

Attention all savvy property investors! Are you looking for the most affordable investment hotspots in 2023? Then catch our recent webinar hosted by Hotspotting.com.au's Terry Ryder and Tim Graham. Hotspotting's latest research and analysis on real estate markets has yielded an encouraging outlook for 2023 and beyond, following 18 months of turbulence and declining sales activity in many markets. Learn their top strategies for identifying emerging markets that offer rising sales activity a...

Misleading Headlines

News media is always happy to sensationalise an issue or embellish the facts to make sales but sometimes they go beyond what has always been known in the journalism industry as a beat-up. Sometimes, indeed increasingly often, what we are presented with is an outright lie – with journalists happy to present their customers with misinformation. It’s highly unethical and dishonest – and in legal terms there’s a word for it – it’s called fraud – seeking to make money dishonestly.

PIPA and Investors

I recently attended the annual national conference in Sydney of PIPA, the Property Investment Professionals of Australia. In many ways this is the most important organisation in Australia in terms of finding solutions to one of the nation’s most pressing problems, the rental shortage. PIPA comprises people who deal every day with the people who supply over 90% of the homes that people rent in Australia – private investors. They’re often referred to as mum-and-dad investors, because most of t...

Mad Max

The person in the image behind me is Australia’s dumbest and most dangerous politician. I know that’s a pretty big statement, because Australia is full of politicians who are none too bright and who have ideas and policies which would be extremely damaging if they everbecame law – particularly on issues relating to the housing industry. But this character is the pick of a very bad bunch.

How To Predict Real Estate Better Than Bank Economists

The key to success in property investment lies in identifying locations which will outperform the general market over time and pinpointing the right time to take action. Essentially this means forecasting events in markets across the nation. But is this realistically achievable for the average Australian consumer?   The truth is that anyone can learn the basic tools for understanding property market dynamics well enough to determine when to get into the market and where to buy for long-t...

Short-Stay Imposts

One of the most dishonest and unethical things that politicians commonly do in this country is to find a way to increase taxes on specific sections of the Australian population - but present it to the public as a measure to improve life for ordinary people. We’re seeing this currently with attitudes to citizens who seek to establish a business by letting a property they own to tourists and other short-term visitors to the area. These kinds of properties typically use systems like Airbnb or S...

Apartments

Apartments are rapidly becoming the dwelling of choice for a majority of people in some of the key locations across the nation. More and more people are opting to buy apartments and other types of attached dwellings because of the low maintenance lifestyle and/or the lower buy-in prices. Right now, the strongest markets in our biggest cities are the inner-city areas where apartments dominate the residential real estate scene. All this is graphically illustrated in the new Spring 2023 edition...

Affordability Lies

My business, which publishes the Hotspotting.com.au website, has a pretty simple philosophy in the pursuit of success: if we make our customers happy and/or satisfied, we’ll be successful. The idea is to be helpful to people trying to achieve an objective – for example, finding a good location to buy a property to achieve a good rental return and capital growth over time. The philosophy is: if we’re helpful to people, they’ll become our customers and the business will be successful. In my ex...

Inflation Coming Down Fast

There are a couple of notable things about the latest inflation result. According to the ABS, annual inflation fell to 4.9% in July, down from 5.4% in June and the high of 7.8% in late 2022. This is good news overall, because it means the level of price increases in many items, including food, is abating. And it’s good news from the viewpoint of mortgages, because it makes further increases in interest rates increasingly unlikely. With the rate of inflation coming down fast, it appears that ...

Index Records Dramatic Revival in Real Estate Markets

Overwhelmingly the theme of property markets across Australia is one of recovery. Hotspotting’s new Spring 2023 survey of sales activity throughout the nation shows that most of the cities and regional markets which had been in decline are now moving emphatically into a phase of revival. Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, as well as the regional markets of Queensland, South Australia and Victoria, are leading a significant momentum shift in Australian real estate. The recovery in activity and p...

Government Housing Target Is Fanciful

In keeping with the great tradition in Australian politics of providing window dressing rather than real solutions, the political leadership has created a media opportunity but no resolution of the housing shortage crisis. Right now, what this country needs is real policies to encourage and incentivise mum and dad property investors. Governments need to create a climate in which ordinary Australians will be motivated to buy investment properties and make them available for long-term rentals....

Canberra The Market To Avoid

The general theme for property markets around Australia is recovery, with many cities and regional markets mounting significant revivals in their markets as the year has evolved. But there’s one major market that I would avoid as an investor – Canberra. This is a market that looks increasingly unattractive, for a host of reasons, including political interference.

Webinar - Tune Out the Noise & Tune In to the Experts - w Miriam Sandkuhler

Tune Out the Noise & Tune In to the Experts     Legendary writer Rudyard Kipling suggested that “if you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs” you will succeed where others fail.   He wasn’t thinking of Australian real estate when he wrote those words but they apply aptly to the current situation in property markets.   Many real estate consumers are confused amid economic disruption, political meddling, negative media and inconsistent data about market perfo...

Spring Is Not Best

Every year around August, real estate agents and news media start chattering about the upcoming “Spring selling season”. The general theme is that this is the best time to sell, because flowers will be blooming and there will be optimism in the air as temperatures rise. But the same people who proclaim this to be the best time for vendors, also declare that this is the best time to buy. By definition, it cannot be both. If it’s a sellers’ market, it’s difficult to argue credibly that it’s a ...

Regional Victoria

We’ve seen significant improvement in markets across Regional Victoria recently, as the state joins the recovery momentum seen in many markets across Australia. Our latest survey of market activity shows that, in Regional Victoria, the revival has gone to another level lately. Our research shows that, in the latest quarter, the number of declining locations has halved and the number recovering locations has more than doubled. Locations with positive rankings in our survey have increased from...

How Government Milks Property

There are many reasons why housing is so expensive in Australia, but there is one major reason that over-rides all the others: politicians keep adding to the cost. Housing is ridiculously expensive in this country and keeps becoming more so, because all three levels of government treat the housing industry as a cash cow. They love to milk the housing industry for revenue – and are adept at finding new and innovative ways to create new taxes, fees and charges – or increase the existing ones. ...

Mortgage Cliff

Here’s a quick quiz to see whether you’ve been paying attention lately. Question one: How many times have predictions of things like property prices falling off a cliff appeared in media headlines in the past, say, three years? Question two: How many times have things actually gone ahead and fallen off the forecast cliff? Question three: Should we be listening any more to journalists and economists who predict these dire cliff disasters? So, how did you go with the quiz? I don’t...

Melbourne Recovery

The Melbourne market has staged a remarkable turnaround, transitioning from a struggling market to one showing promise of considerable buoyancy in the near future. Three months ago we reported the first signs of recovery across Greater Melbourne markets, but our latest quarterly survey of sales activity has provided compelling evidence that Melbourne is now coming back strongly. The number of locations classified as rising markets has increased five-fold and recovering markets have q...

Housing Solution

I should be accustomed to watching politicians failing to fix problems, but somehow I can never get used to it. The capacity for Australian politicians to blunder when we need them to excel is quite extraordinary. And I think part of the problem is that politicians are really only interested in the press conference and haven’t thought much beyond that. And so it is with the political response to the housing crisis. The Prime Minister got together with all the state and territory p...

Webinar - Ignore The Media & Invest For Profit w Danny Buxton from Triple Zero Property

Smart property investment decisions are best made by tuning out the news media.   Media is relentlessly negative, often fuelled by pessimistic forecasts from economists whose track records in predicting real estate outcomes is woefully bad.   An online columnist, in reviewing the latest forecasts from one of the major banks, asked the question: "Should we still be listening?" The answer, we believe, is a resounding No!   Those who listened to media forecasts sourced from bank e...

Short Term Changes Don't Matter

Media loves to place great significance on insignificant data, with month-to- month changes in prices, rents, vacancies and building approvals given implications and connotations that they simply don’t deserve. The advice, as always, is to ignore them.

Airbnb Is Not The Problem

Some property owners use short-term letting rather than long-term residential tenants and they’ve been blamed by some in politics for the rental shortage – but an independent university study has confirmed what we already know, that Airbnb has not caused the national rental shortage crisis.

National Top 10 Best Buys

The history of residential real estate in Australia is, in one sense, a story of defiance. Economists and journalists keep predicting dire outcomes and property markets keep proving them wrong. 2023 has provided a wonderful case study for that. The year began with a plethora of predictions from the usual suspects – senior economists working for the Big 4 banks, the nation’s worst real estate forecaster Shane Oliver from AMP Capital, and a host of others. The common feature of their forecasts...