Now that the Federal Election is done and dusted, there’s every reason to believe that the property market around Australia will stabilise and perhaps even return to a mild amount of growth.

As you know, the markets in Sydney and Melbourne have been quite ordinary over the past 12 months and after record levels of growth (40-60% growth over the past 5 years), many seem surprised that these markets have come back 10-15%.

Here in South-East Queensland, it’s been the most stable property market in the country for almost 10 years now with some minimal growth in the housing market but some regression in the unit/townhouse markets.

So, what’s in store for us moving forwards?

If you read my weekly blogs, you’ll know how the Royal Banking Commission has made it tougher to borrow money and the threat of the change to Negative Gearing Legislation has also left many sitting on their hands.

So, the Coalition has been re-elected and from the point of view of many experts in economics, it seems that normality has been restored.

As I mentioned two weeks ago, there is a new incentive for First Home Buyers (albeit a proverbial ‘drop in the ocean’ in my opinion) and last week, APRA (The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority) recommended that banks should change the way they assess their customers’ ability to make mortgage repayments in a move that would let people borrow more. Since 2014 customers have been required to meet an interest rate minimum floor of 7% but now lenders will be allowed to set their own benchmark, so long as there is a 2.5% buffer above the mortgage rate.

Additionally, there’s a strong indication that we might be about to see a reduction in official Interest rates of 0.25% (whether the banks pass on the full reduction to their customers is another matter).

All these factors seem to indicate that things may be about to turn around and already in Sydney and Melbourne, the auction clearance rates were stronger last weekend (hovering around 65% compared to less than 55% 12 months ago).

I’m a little cynical in analysing auction clearance rates – to me, this can be more of a reflection that sellers are now more aware of the market conditions than they were 12 months ago when things were still reasonably good…and agents down there are likely no longer “buying listings” (telling their owners that the property is worth more than they actually believe it to be in order to secure business).

There’s plenty on the market down there now so agents are likely to be more realistic with the appraisals as many won’t want to carry lots of stock that may be hard to sell.

On a side note, the Brisbane auction clearance rate was 37% last Saturday and this is a little above the figure that it was 12 months ago.

This means 63% of properties failed to sell under the hammer last weekend and perhaps this is a discussion for another day!

So, all of a sudden, there’s some optimism around and hopefully this will metamorphize into sales.

Oddly enough, we had a particularly quiet Saturday (in terms of buyer numbers through open homes) and other agents I’ve spoken to experience similar results.

In saying this, my team and I made 4 sales last week with another 7 offers on different properties (a few of these are agreed and being signed as we speak whilst a couple are still being negotiated) so this is really strong activity for us at this time of the year.

You may remember where I discussed in my blog a couple of months ago that buyer enquiries were well ahead of what we were receiving at this time last year, sales are certainly stronger compared to this time last year, but open home numbers are lower.

This would seem to indicate that there’s very few ‘lookers’ out there right now…only serious buyers are out and about!

I’ll be honest – it’s hard to obtain a read on where the market is heading at the moment.

This week, I have more appointments in my diary than I’ve had for more than five years so perhaps this is a sign that property owners are moving ahead with plans to sell and will soon be in the market to buy.

Certainly, the number of online views to our properties is higher than what it was last year (with most of our properties) so is this the calm before the storm?

The next 4 weeks will be quite telling as June is normally a slightly quieter month than most so it will be interesting to see how the buying public responds to the re-elected Government, APRA’s changes to assessible rates and possible interest rate cuts.

In my opinion, the big ship on the horizon is the large-scale infrastructure projects about to commence including the Cross River Rail, Queen’s Wharf Brisbane (including the new Casino), Brisbane Live, Waterfront Precinct, Brisbane’s new runway, Herston Quarter, West Village, Brisbane Metro, Howard Smith Wharves and the Brisbane International Cruise Terminal.

These projects are expected to be delivered by 2026 and will cost an estimated $17 billion…meaning that this will create plenty of jobs and should bring plenty of money into the economy…and hopefully create a larger demand for housing.

Whatever happens to the property market, we’ll make sure you receive up-to-date information so you can hopefully predict where the market is heading before the masses of people do…and this is one of the best ways you can make money in the real estate market.

Until next week, Happy Listing & Happy Selling!