Were you told from a very young age that if you want to succeed at something, you must put in time, hard work and importantly, practice.  Successful property investors are not born with a “How to” manual and they certainly don’t rely on luck. Michael Yardney shares what he has learnt from working with these top people over the years.

REA, or as it is better known realestate.com.au, has been tracking demand for Australian property since about 2013. They have been looking at the number of people wanting  to buy a property and contrast that to the supply of properties and they are starting to get some really interesting results.  We discuss that with Nerida Connisbee who is that group’s Chief Economist.

We get an update on foreign buyers and their influence on the Australian property market from the head of Juwai in Australia – Gavin Norris. Juwai, of course, is the number one Chinese international property portal.

Our feature guest is Charles Tarbey, CEO, founder and owner of Century 21 Australasia.  He tells us how he was able to buy his first house – in Sydney – at the tender age of 18.  As he says “anything is possible when you don’t know what you’re doing”.

We talk affordability with the Victorian Chief Executive Officer of the Urban Development Institute of Australia, Danni Addison who says “the government needs to have a courageous conversation with the community about this burning issue”.

 
Transcripts:
What we can learn from tracking demand - Nerida Connisbee
Kevin:  I’m joined now by Nerida Connisbee who is from the REA group, Chief Economist, of course, with RealEstate.com.au.

Nerida, thanks again for your time.

Nerida:  Thanks for having me.

Kevin:  Tell me about the Group Property Demand Index. What’s that about?

Nerida:  What we’ve been doing is tracking demand for property in the Australian market since about 2013. Basically, how we track it is we look at the number of people looking to buy a property and contrast that to the supply of properties. We’re starting to get some really interesting results, and probably the most interesting is Sydney and Melbourne are now at record levels in terms of demand.

Kevin:  That, of course, begs me to ask the question about supply and demand. There’s a lot of talk about an oversupply or a lack of demand for some of the inner-city areas around Brisbane as an example. Does the index show that?

Nerida:  It does. It’s interesting; Queensland sits on about the Australian average for apartment demand and also for housing demand. I think what’s happening is that although Queensland is sitting in that position, it’s really places like the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast that are really propping up that apartment demand. I think most people would be pretty nervous at the moment with Brisbane CBD, and I think the strength of other markets is really offsetting that.

Kevin:  What was the number one most-in-demand suburb around Australia?

Nerida:  The number one most-in-demand suburb is a suburb called Warrandyte in the northeast of Melbourne. It’s an outer-suburban area, a pretty leafy area. It’s an area that has a fairly large diversity of homes from fairly low-cost homes to high-cost luxury homes. That was the number one for housing.

For apartments, it was Manly in Sydney – beachside, very popular not just with people from Australia but also globally, as well.

Kevin:  I see that the South Australian market made the top ten list. Did that surprise you?

Nerida:  It did surprise me. On average, South Australia sits between Queensland and WA, so it’s not a high-demand market. But certainly, there was a suburb, the suburb of Norwood, that came in in the top ten for houses. I think the fact that Adelaide is pretty affordable from a national perspective was part of it, but also, that’s a really great suburb in Adelaide, as well, so I think you’d have a lot of local people wanting to buy there as well.

Kevin: