Michael Yardney will tell us what’s going to drive our economy now that the mining boom is over.

With property prices continuing to soar across the country, first home buyers and investors are looking for easier ways to enter the property market. Chris Gray looks at how they are doing it.

Our population growth is slowing. John McGrath joins us to discuss that and also comments on where and why the market appears to be slowing.

Simon Pressley from Propertyology has been analysing the latest employment data for locations right across Australia and has found some interesting discoveries that will impact property.

Property management expert Corina Bailey has a shot at the industry.

Greville Pabst takes a look at the Melbourne market with reports circulating that there are too many units.

 
Transcripts:
Simon Pressley
Kevin:  As any seasoned investor is going to tell you, employment trends can be a precursor to property market trends. Propertyology’s Simon Pressley has spent quite a considerable amount of time analyzing the latest employment data for locations right around Australia. He’s come up with some pretty interesting discoveries that we’re going to talk about.

Hi, Simon. Thanks for your time.

Simon:  Thanks for having me, Kevin.

Kevin:  Simon, firstly, what did you find out?

Simon:  Looking at employment trends is something we do several times throughout the year, Kevin, because it’s important to see where the jobs are that people might move towards.

Nationally, Australia is actually performing a lot better than broad unemployment rates would suggest. Obviously, over the last couple of years, unemployment rates have trended up – not to alarming levels – but we’ve actually created a lot more jobs. There are 3% more jobs here in Australia today than two years ago.

Kevin:  I know it’s one of the factors you need to look at when you’re determining where you want to invest. It’s a pretty good one, too. Where does it rank in importance from some of the other factors?

Simon:  I would always say affordability is the number one consideration we look for. But employment and economic development would be a very close second.

Kevin:  Have you noticed any trends in there with employment and things like developments and infrastructure around Australia?

Simon:  There is. Infrastructure, depending on the nature of the project, can create a lot of jobs, but it depends. For example, Northern Territory – Darwin specifically – has created really good jobs over the last two years, but a big chunk of that was the Equus LNG Project, so it’s a short-term job creation factor. There’s devil in the detail when looking at job data. It’s not just looking for big numbers; it’s looking for the sustainability of it.

Kevin:  How important is it to differentiate between actual job numbers and unemployment rates?

Simon:  Look. It’s critically important, I think. Generally speaking, what we read in the media about employment is a very broad unemployment rate, and even then, it’s usually “Queensland is this, WA is that.” Well, as a property investor, that’s really useless information to us. We’re not going to invest in the whole state.

Even if you have stripped down an unemployment rate, to say, one city – like Brisbane – we see more value in what is the trend of that? You can have an unemployment rate that might be above the national average but fast trending down because it’s creating lots of jobs. Looking more at the job creation data rather than the broad unemployment rates is a lot more valuable to us.

Kevin:  What did you find out state by state?

Simon:  State by state, Victoria and New South Wales have performed very strongly, and there’s no coincidence there that Sydney and Melbourne have had really strong property markets. At a state level, New South Wales has 4% more jobs today than two years ago against a national average of 3%. Victoria has 2.9% more jobs.