Over the past few days I’ve been pondering just how much the recent election outcome and the property market have in common.
By ELIZABETH ALLEN
To approach both the election result and current property prices with equanimity it helps to believe in the old adage “every cloud has a silver lining”.
It’s been hard while watching Australia wallow in its post-election hiatus and seeing the Independents’ egos – with a couple of exceptions – expand daily.
But I’m hanging in there and the silver lining that I (hope) I can see is that the rock-bottom low of national politics, evident in the dispiriting election campaign, is behind us.
I’m taking the same approach to Australian house prices.
Although the jury is still out on whether prices will trend downward after a flat July (the latest figures available), the silver lining is that it’s a buyers’ market.
But just like the Federal Election where electorates swung every which way but loose, different geographical parts of the Australian property market are going to return different results over the next few years.
There will be no ‘even swing’, to continue the election analogy.
The trick as always will be knowing where to buy; where the likely hotspots are, where growth will outstrip the national average.
Which brings me to API’s annual Hot 100, a list of the anticipated top capital growth spots across the country as identified by a panel of carefully selected experts.
Likely hotspots have been found in every state, be they Launceston’s inner suburb of Invermay, the coal-rich Surat basin in southern Queensland, or upmarket Randwick in eastern Sydney.
The list makes interesting reading.
To see how accurate the experts’ predictions were in API’s 2009 Hot 100, go to: http://www.apimagazine.com.au/api-online/web-specials/2010/report-cart-2009-hot-100
