Author; David

Melbourne has seriously underperformed most other capital cities since COVID.  Perth and Brisbane seem to have been completely immune to interest rate rises, achieving double digit growth year on year in spite of mortgage rates tripling since 2022.  So we can’t blame interest rates for Melbourne’s lackluster growth, even negative growth in some instances.  My […]

The property market is inextricably complex – millions of permutations relating to supply and demand that don’t always have the expected outcome.  For example, the supply of new apartment completions in Melbourne in 2024 is roughly one tenth of what it was back in 2014, yet sales are stagnant, even though our population has boomed […]

Last Saturday was ‘Super Saturday’, traditionally the busiest auction day of the year with campaigns bookended between the Grand Final and Melbourne Cup long weekends.  There were over 1900 auctions scheduled across Victoria, although many of them didn’t make it to auction.  The reported clearance rate ranged between 59 percent (REA) and 76% (REIV).  What’s […]

Markets are fickle because they are driven by humans, who are fickle. Market sentiment is a very subjective and nebulous thing – attempting to collate a bunch of people’s feelings and emotions towards the market. It is purely subjective. It depends on who you ask and when. It can also turn on a dime.  Anyone […]

In a “normal” market like today, where prices are neither in free fall nor rapidly accelerating, most property transactions occur via negotiation between two parties – vendor and one buyer.  So, for example, when you see a clearance rate of 70%, it often means that out of 10 auctions, two sold before, two sold under […]

Today we were presented with REA’s latest economic data by their Property Economist, Anne Flaherty.  There were several key takeaways, but the woolly mammoth in the room was Melbourne’s gross underperformance in property price growth compared to literally everywhere else in Australia in recent years.  Median house price growth since March 2020: Adelaide – 73.2% […]

We have just entered that short window of the year when the premium family homes come to market. The trophy homes… Your forever home.  If you’re looking in the $5,000,000 – $10,000,000 range in Stonnington, especially outside of Toorak, there’s never much choice.  Spring of 2022 and 2023 were meagre affairs in this respect, with […]

This unseasonably warm weather has been a welcome yet unexpected treat lately, like a Raygun lighting up social media feeds around the world. The August heatwave is very timely too, given that most of us had to do a double take when reading our latest energy bills, which seemed to have doubled since last winter. […]

We had a glimpse of spring today.  Driving through the wide streets of Malvern, I was surprised to see the plane trees are already budding green and the cherry blossoms are out in full force.  Buyers are about to bask in the warming glow of even more screen time, with a lengthening list of new […]