Market Report
Property Market Report: May 2024
5 May 2024
by Dee Pajevikj
In many ways we Australians are a supine and benign people, slow to anger and perfectly willing to suffer the slings and arrows of our fumbling, stumbling governments without rising up and casting them into outer darkness. The Labor State Government doubles our Land Tax and a few grumbles are heard at dinner parties and a few vexatious callers ring 3AW, but that’s about the extent of the repercussion they suffer. Imagine the Governor of Texas announcing he was going to double a tax – any tax. They’d throw him over the wall into Mexico followed by an English/Spanish phrasebook. Our state government spent money none of us had, and now we are quietly paying their debt.
The only upside that can be gleaned from the unconscionable hiking of Land Tax is that the financial headaches it has given many property owners is causing them to list their properties for sale, thus enlivening the real estate market in otherwise straightened times.
At Abercrombys we are currently selling renovated homes at a premium. Building costs have risen mightily with recent inflation, making people wary of going down the renovation path themselves. This has elicited a great hunger for homes already renovated. So if you own a well renovated home now is a particularly advantageous time to put it on the market in order to achieve an exceptional sale price.
Stock levels have been shrinking over the last month as the torpor of winter descends and people decide they might be better off waiting for spring to sell. However, canny sellers are working against trend, recognizing that while stock levels are down the market’s appetite hasn’t waned – eager purchasers are still out there, making it a good time to sell.
At Abercrombys over the last month, using our discreet sales methodology, we’ve sold a variety of Melbourne’s more enviable homes, each of them fulfilling and often surpassing the extraordinary sales result it warranted. It’s been a very fulfilling autumn for our staff and clientele.
And with stock levels tightening and a keen market to feed, now is a judicious moment to showcase your property and let us help you achieve its potential.
Immigration is still rattling along lickety-split and keeping the rental market as buoyant and vibrant as at any time in its history. Rents are high and lessees are queuing with CVs in hand to get housed. Our property management team has accrued data showing that larger executive and family homes are taking longer to lease, while apartments and smaller houses are leasing in a trice. This seems to be principally due to the immigrant section of the demand for housing being unable to immediately afford the larger, more expensive, domiciles.
Given the historically low vacancy rates and scarcity of rental properties the market is currently suffering, rents remain strong, and are getting stronger. Australians are now spending a higher proportion of their income on rent than they have for decades, another factor leading to the recent trend toward smaller, more modest, properties.