Sky News Real Estate – Budget 2018 and its affect on Home Owners and Investors

Ben Kingsley joins the Sky News panel to discuss the latest Budget announcement, Budget 2018, and its implications to home owners, first home buyers and investors.

So, what’s the overall take on the Budget, and what’s it saying about consumer confidence? Importantly, given that $24.5 billion dollars out of an overall $75 billion spending is being dedicated to infrastructure, how will this impact on housing prices?

Full interview with Ben:

To Ben Kingsley in Melbourne now. The centrepiece of the Budget 2018 was that big infrastructure spend. What trickle down affect will this have on housing prices and where will it be felt?

Great question Sophie. $24.5 billion dollars over an overall $75 billion spending package. In terms of decision making in terms of where people are going to buy their property is most likely on our major arterials and also on our rail lines. So, some of the interesting stuff out of Budget 2018, for me, in Badgerys Creek – the Western Sydney Airport — $5.3 billion going into that project,  so I would be looking at the designing and planning of where those rail lines are going to be. Because they are going to be really nice lifestyle hubs that are going to give you convenience to head out to the airport or to also head into the city. Same with Melbourne. We’re also seeing the announcement for Tullamarine Airport — $5 billion to be spent there. So, the question is going to be — which way is that going to run? Is it going to run through the western suburbs and hook back, or it going to run through, say Essendon, and North Western suburbs as well? They’re going to be some interesting parts of that. The other interesting thing that’s also caught my eye is around the metro in Brisbane. It’s early days — it’s only in the planning stages — but I like that project. It’s taking more buses off the road, it’s quicker and easier access through that metro line — these types of things are going to be important. That’s the infrastructure that’s most important to grow property prices. And then back down in Melbourne, I also like the project that’s going to connect the Ring Road. So, the M80, which is our Ring Road. From the end of it, which is Greensborough, and connecting that into the Eastern Freeway. That will give Melbourne this much needed Eastern-West Link that we don’t have, and we should have got many, many years ago.

So these are some of the important projects. Because homebuyers want convenience.

They want to be able to get to their working environment and still have the livability of the area in which they’re buying. So I’d be watching those projects in terms of how infrastructure’s going to impact prices.

Can infrastructure projects ever have a negative impact on housing prices, particularly during the construction prices? We’ve seen a lot of that during the West-Connects Development in Sydney, where some areas did experience a bit of a dip when that construction an upheaval was underway.

I think we all want convenience —we don’t want congestions. So there is that pain before the pleasure, but ultimately, the long term play is the that the infrastructure project is going to deliver jobs and it’s going to deliver convenience into those locations, I think you’ve got to lift your eyes a bit and say to yourself, “I’m investing in property or I’m buying property for the long term. I don’t want to speculate in this sort of this; property’s too risky to speculate in.”

So, for me, I’d be saying it’s the long term conveniences and the lifestyle amenity that flow on from that as we get more population in these locations.