Australia Property – Looking at a Quiet Three Months

So last week media commentators were talking about a busy holiday season in Australian property - now it appears that all is doom and gloom again. Frankly I wish newspapers would stop treating the whole of Australia as a single property market and making meaningless broad statements which may indeed to be right for some small part of the sector but is probably incorrect for the other 90% of the Australian property sector!

Now we have this gem from the Queensland's Courier Mail:

"Australia's housing market is heading into a deep $14 billion hole as house prices escalate, the first-home owners grant stops and banks tighten lending requirements."

Hmm really - well from a West Australian point of view - I don't think so - houses are definitely selling - maybe not at record prices but selling, and the state is braced for a renewal of demand from all those over-paid resource sector workers who are already sucking skilled tradesmen out of Perth and back into the North-West and, to a lesser extent the Pilbara, oh and the gold price is still going from strength-to-strength as well seeing the precious metal sector booming across the state.

Superpit Kalgoorlie - Valuable WA Property!

So we have lots of people arriving in Western Australia, needing accommodation, with the money to pay.  As huge projects such as the Gorgon Gas field start to ramp up even over the Christmas period - I don't see that the demand is going anywhere but through the roof. Meanwhile supply side is going from bad to worse. From one side the industry is again suffering shortages of practically any trade you can name, on the other site the state has a planning system which is positively antique - and not in a good way. So yes I would say that prices are set to increase sharply in WA for properties which appeal to resource sector workers and their families.

So the argument is that the banks have tightened their lending requirements - well I doubt it quite frankly in an industry where the average worker is on a A$200,000+ package. Perhaps people need to close two or three credit cards before applying and pay off a couple of small personal loans they might have paying off the third car or the jet ski - but this is hardly a lending crises - to any but the most cynical.

Owning your own home is still most Australian's main financial dream. So long as they have jobs, and there are banks wanting to make money from mortgages - there won't be anything terribly wrong with the Australian housing market.