Property Prices Will Keep Plunging - Expert

[Guest consa]

ONE of Australia's leading property experts has made a brutal warning: Get out of the real estate market now.

Aussie Home Loans managing director John Symond believes the market is yet to bottom and people should sell now to avoid major losses.

Mr Symond said the property market on the eastern seaboard would continue its downward spiral longer than people expect. He predicted prices would drop another 10 per cent in the next year.

"I think it will be a four- to five-year cycle before we see prices starting to head up again," he said.

"Sydney is probably hardest hit because that's where the booms always start. If someone is looking to sell and buy, it cancels itself out but if somebody is thinking of selling and not buying you will get a better price today than tomorrow.

He said the biggest threat to the property market would be a major global event which could see prices in beachside suburbs drop up to 25 per cent overnight.

Australian Property Monitors research director Louis Christopher praised Mr Symond for making a comment that could damage his own business.

"He is calling it as he sees it and not many people do that," he said.

Well what can you say?

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,...5001021,00.html

[Trevor Werewolf]

I saw him on tele last night. I thought his statement was quite brave, as I'm sure he's going to get a lot of stick from his colleagues ...... but could he have an ulterior motive? His statement was instintly dismissed by some other dullard 'expert' who said this won't happen because of interest rates ....yawn!

No sign of prices dropping here in WA, although houses are sticking around for a long time. Next door neighbours place has been on the market for well over a year at $590,000 and no offers. Median houses around here are staying on the market for longer as well ... no suprise really as FTB's no longer exist!

[Smurf1976]

No sign of prices dropping here in WA, although houses are sticking around for a long time. Next door neighbours place has been on the market for well over a year at $590,000 and no offers. Median houses around here are staying on the market for longer as well ... no suprise really as FTB's no longer exist!

Sounds very much like Hobart was in 2004. The big buying frenzy here was August/September 2003 but only now are real price falls becoming readily visible and there are still plenty of naive sellers expecting peak prices. But there's enough cheaper ones now to forget about the overpriced properties so the crash is underway...

[Trevor Werewolf]

Hi Smurf

It looks like were almost a year behind you then, our crazy time was August/September 2004, although the crappy local newspaper has reported rises of 44% in the past year!

I don't know what Tassie's like, but the whole of WA looks like a building site with houses being built everywhere and seemingly going up overnight! I really think there's going to be an overabundance of property in the coming years, which will hopefully reduce prices even further!

Although nothing appears to be selling here at the moment the EA's are still recruiting new staff - it seems that every other person you talk to is an EA.

There was an auction at the weekend for a 1950's two storey, 4 bed place opposite the estuary. It's reserve price was $450,000, but guess what? Despite loads turning up for the auction it never met it's reserve! It's a beautiful house, but 4 years ago you could have bought it for around $180,000.

Yep, I think we may have reached the peak over here now!

[JP1746]

Hi Smurf

It looks like were almost a year behind you then, our crazy time was August/September 2004, although the crappy local newspaper has reported rises of 44% in the past year!

I don't know what Tassie's like, but the whole of WA looks like a building site with houses being built everywhere and seemingly going up overnight! I really think there's going to be an overabundance of property in the coming years, which will hopefully reduce prices even further!

Although nothing appears to be selling here at the moment the EA's are still recruiting new staff - it seems that every other person you talk to is an EA.

There was an auction at the weekend for a 1950's two storey, 4 bed place opposite the estuary. It's reserve price was $450,000, but guess what? Despite loads turning up for the auction it never met it's reserve! It's a beautiful house, but 4 years ago you could have bought it for around $180,000.

Yep, I think we may have reached the peak over here now!

Since the Sydney property market came of the boil a while back, every man and his dog in the so called "investment seminar" racket has waxed lyrical about Perth / WA, as though it had some supernatural invulnerability about it. Well, the bigger they are, the harder they fall, I reckon - watch for some spectacular declines in WA ... coming SOON.

PS - full marks to John Symonds for telling it like it is. Watch them all come out of the woodwork now !

[BearLite]

Adapted from Land Down Under by Men at Work, 1982.

Renting in a fried-out condie

On a but-to-let trail, head full of Kirsty

I met a strange lady, she made me nervous

She took me in and gave me negative equity

And she said,

"Do you come from a land down under?

Where women owe and men go under?

Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?

You better run, you better take cover."

Buying a bed from a man with hassles

His flat was six by four and full of troubles

I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"

He just smiled and gave me a 40 year mortgage

And he said,

"I come from a land down under

Where beer drowns your sorrow and men go under

Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?

You better run, you better take cover."

Lying in a den rented by Kirsty

With a slack jaw, and not much to say

I said to her, "Are you trying to tempt me

Because I come from the land of plenty?"

And she said,

"Oh! Are you a sell to renter? (oh yeah yeah)

Where women do as they're told and men don't go under?

Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?

You're smarter than me, you'd better take over."

[The Masked Tulip]

I like his 25% overnight bit but, as I keep telling everyone, a 25% drop in my part of the World will not bring HPs anywhere back to normal. Explain a house near me on the market today for 425K which last sold in 2000 for 82K - would a 25% fall make the house affordable? Nope.

40 and 50 percent falls are required. Good article though.

[Elizabeth]

Although nothing appears to be selling here at the moment the EA's are still recruiting new staff - it seems that every other person you talk to is an EA.

Sounds like some sort of cult. Do they surround potential buyers chanting in a monotone "house prices only ever go up"?

[Smurf1976]

Hi Smurf

It looks like were almost a year behind you then, our crazy time was August/September 2004, although the crappy local newspaper has reported rises of 44% in the past year!

I don't know what Tassie's like, but the whole of WA looks like a building site with houses being built everywhere and seemingly going up overnight! I really think there's going to be an overabundance of property in the coming years, which will hopefully reduce prices even further!

Although nothing appears to be selling here at the moment the EA's are still recruiting new staff - it seems that every other person you talk to is an EA.

There was an auction at the weekend for a 1950's two storey, 4 bed place opposite the estuary. It's reserve price was $450,000, but guess what? Despite loads turning up for the auction it never met it's reserve! It's a beautiful house, but 4 years ago you could have bought it for around $180,000.

Yep, I think we may have reached the peak over here now!

It all sounds VERY much like what has already happened in Tassie but with a time lag. Quite a lot of the houses for sale around Hobart now are empty. Quite clearly we have too many houses and it's a bit like a reverse game of musical chairs - they can't all be occupied at the same time.

Building boom - sure have. Over the past few years there have been houses going up everywhere there is land including in areas not attached to existing suburbs. Now we have the glut of unsold properties but some builders are now acting as real estate agents selling their clients' existing houses to try and keep the game going. Builders are cutting charges and a marketing war is heating up.

A recent development is the use of radio advertising to sell individual properties. It's done in a style very similar to the live crosses they do to people giving away drinks, chips etc. only it's a cross to a real estate agent selling a house.

As for Perth, we've heard plenty about Perth real estate down here too and lots of reasons why it supposedly will boom forever. It seems that the spruikers simply moved states. For a while there were a lot of mainland (mostly Sydney and Melbourne) investors buying houses in Hobart without having ever been to Tassie. They had no idea what sort of area they were buying in. They just bought and no doubt a few will have their fingers burned.

In very rough terms I think the Australian cities are following the crash in roughly the following order - Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth. I'm not really sure where Darwin and Canberra fit in there.

Based on what's happened in Hobart, expect a bit of a bounce in the market in Perth next year as the final bulls buy their properties. The problems in the market should then become very visible once Winter is over. Also, in Hobart it is the outlying (non-suburban) areas which have really been hit in terms of prices so comparable areas of Perth would presumably be the first to fall too.

The first visible sign was a sharp slump in volumes which I understand to be down about 50%. Next came the increasing size of the "real estate guide" which is now a massive 72 pages (tabloid newspaper size) for a city with only 200,000 people (Hobart). It used to be half that size. Then came the brief recovery in volumes and price and then the builders started advertising and cutting prices and now it all seems to be going down.

[gus]

Well what can you say?

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,...5001021,00.html

Well what can you say?

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,...5001021,00.html

Watching ABC AsiaPacific last night in Jakata and low and behold ads come on offering apartments for sale in Brisbane . I suspect properties cannot be offloaded on an increasingly cautious and aware Aussie and the property company in question is trying to attract "hot money" from H/Kong , S'pore, and Indonesia.

I've been watching this channel for some time and the first time I've seen this type of ad. Sign of the times?

gus.

[ajh]

In very rough terms I think the Australian cities are following the crash in roughly the following order - Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth. I'm not really sure where Darwin and Canberra fit in there.

Canberra's median has probably gone down the furthest of any capital city, and further falls are predicted for the next 6 months or so, but the total government monopoly on wholesale land supply will place a floor at the bottom end. (In this respect, the Canberra market really is different.)

Unfortunately I think this floor will be around 250-300K for houses and townhouses, which in my opinion is about 50,000 too high.

Where there might be some serious movement is in the unit/apartment market, because it seems to me there's been some overbuilding (but nothing like Melbourne or Sydney). We might also see some reaction in the traditional Canberra 'overspill' market of Queanbeyan.