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The Australian property market has continued to tell many different stories; city to city and market to market, all in the first quarter of 2016. The most noticeable of course is a sign of the
Sydney market levelling out after several years of well above average growth.
Melbourne was the best performing market over the last 12 months and according to the February 2016 CoreLogic RP Data Hedonic Home Value Index results, released 1st March, dwelling values across Australia’s combined capital cities showed a 0.5% rise in February, pushing dwelling values 1.4% higher over the past three months.
2016 Australian economy: good, bad or different?
As often happens in the first quarter of the calendar year, we have been inundated with commentary, predictions and forecasts on the Australian economy - and often it’s the danger headlines that get the most coverage. Peter Switzer, one of Australia’s leading business and financial commentators wrote an excellent article asking, is it possible that Australia is in fact the best economy in the world? As Peter often does, he went straight to the facts and listed 10 insightful points on our economy. Below we have listed 4 of the most important points relevant to investing in property:
We’ve grown without a recession for near on 25 years, which is extraordinary. We dodged the GFC recession, which the Yanks called the Great Recession, where their unemployment reached over 10% and ours didn’t break 6%!
Our recent growth rate came in at 3%, 5% higher than expected by expert economists. Economies such as the US and UK are sub-3%, even with official interest rates around 0%. In fact, currently, US economists are arguing over whether their economy is growing at 1% plus or less.
The Economist Intelligence Unit tells us that Australia has five cities in the top most livable cities in the world, while the US has one — Honolulu!
Our government’s debt to GDP, according to Trading Economics is 33.88%, while the US is at 102.98%, the UK 87.3%, Canada 87.66%, Germany 77.1% and Japan is at 229.2%.
FULL ARTICLE: SWITZER.COM.AU
Melbourne our fastest-growing capital
According to data released 30th March 2016 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Melbourne is officially Australia’s largest growing capital city.
Melbourne’s population grew by 2.1% in 2014-15, down slightly from 2.2% last year, but still higher than the next-fastest growing capital, Darwin (1.9 %). Perth, which has been one of the fastest-growing capital cities since the mid-2000s, grew by 1.6% in 2014-15 (down from 1.9% last year) and now sits equal fourth with Brisbane, behind Sydney (1.7%). Australia’s capital cities accounted for the vast majority (83%) of the nation’s total population growth in 2014-15, with most growth occurring in outer suburban and inner city areas.
For information on property as part of your investment portfolio, please contact Verve Group on 08 8120 4877 or email us at contact@vervegroup.com.au