Weekly Property News Insights

Property News Insights

Welcome to week one of our Weekly Property News Insights for 2020, before cascading into the property insights, I wanted to let you how proud we are of our Charity at OBrien Real Estate, our OBrien Real Estate Foundation which is backed by our staff, family and friends in raising much-needed donations for Bushfire Relief. To date so far, our team have raised over $12,000, with a target of $50,000 that we hope to end up achieving.

Now, jumping into the property news. Typically at this time of the year, there are not as property sales occurring, however, there are many crystal ball property forecasts for 2020 occurring and it is our view that in 2020 we will see much more of the growth we saw in the second half of 2019 and most of the growth will be fuelled by investors who in 2019 accounted for less than 25% of total sales which is, in fact, was the lowest participation level on record.  Investors are no doubt being lured back by the potential of bigger capital gains and the low-interest rates. The next major catalyst for market growth will come from the first home buyer with their new incentives, which we believe will impact on demand through most suburbs through both apartments and detached home sales.

The most popular place to buy for first home buyers in 2019 was, in fact, the postcode of 3064 in the city’s outer north, which encompasses the suburbs of Craigieburn, Donnybrook, Roxburgh Park, Kalkallo and Mickleham. Just over 2600 homes were purchased with buyers forking out $38.1 million. Postcode 3064 was then followed by Hoppers Crossing, Tarneit and Truganina with 2112 homes bought. We also saw Point Cook, Werribee and Cranbourne also rank in the top 10.
In other market insights over the Christmas / New Year and following on from stage 1, China / US Trade Deal we saw our biggest trade partner in China make
an announcement from the Peoples Bank of China on its website stating that its banks’ reserve requirement ratio, which basically is the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves is reducing by 50 basis points, and about a week thereafter China also released its inflation figures which put its annual inflation at a 7 year high. Both courses of action is positive news for our economy.

Fresh new building approvals numbers were released this last week and new home builds rose by 11.8 per cent in November which is the biggest lift in 9 months to
14,675 units. However, approvals are still down by 3.8 per cent from a year ago.

And lastly, in closing and a little off-topic, the banning of mobile phones across all public schools in Victoria comes into play in 2020, we see this as a very positive move for our all our current school learners and future generations entering the public schooling system.