Welcome to 2023!
Hopefully this is a great year for you and all of your plans. January 1st I’m told is a very busy time for gym memberships, it’s also traditionally the busiest day of the year for search traffic on realestate.com.au as people look to add buying property to their goals for the year.
The 2022 year in residential real estate was bleak for Australian capital cities.
The worst in recorded data as the following chart illustrates. This data only goes back to 1980 and there have certainly been worse times over the past 200 years as you have a deep well to draw from including the 1890’s land crash, the depression and the numerous wars of the 20th century to name just a few.
A few of the important events for Brisbane property in 2022 included:
* A record January, which turned out to be the end of the 2021 bull market
* The flood event of February, similar in scale to 2011
* The QLD government scared away investors with crazy proposed tax changes
* Short term stay rules, AirBNB, were toughened to discourage this market
* A rental shortage leading to the strongest rental market in many decades
* Interest rates started heading up as inflation and cost of living returned
* The immigration tap was turned back on in QLD
Also there was plenty of negativity occurring on the global stage.
The dominant factor in property price declines was the change in interest rate direction. The era of cheap money appears to be over, at least until the next time interest rates start heading downward.
The long term investing, growth and quality of life thesis for Brisbane remains solid.
– Increasingly high value jobs and industry and a strong economy
– Olympics 2032 and all of the associated infrastructure spending
– Population migration growth is still strong
– A safe and secure capital city close to Asia
– Immigration tap being turned back on
– Excellent relative value compared with Melbourne and Sydney
And I believe the following is the most important point of all. The buying conditions are very good for buyers at the moment. You buy 1 property at a time, not the entire market, and this allows you to buy high quality at a discount which is a huge benefit if your plan is to hold longer term where quality becomes more important than fine tuning timing.
In 2021 it was highly challenging to buy well, you were always competing against a crowd of offers, emotional buyers and sellers demanding record prices, everything including lower quality property sells too well in strong markets.
In 2023 you will be able to bargain hard, be fussy about your targets, buy more quality off market, be patient… None of these were options in 2021.
If you would like to stay in touch with the latest on the ground intel from Brisbane then stay tuned, also please call or email me at any time to have a talk about the choices for buyers.
