Empower Blog Economics

Is the Australian Property market about to crash?

The continuing commentary around the Australian property market is a bit like a movie review that you’d read in any weekend magazine – it’s simply reporting someone’s opinion about the subject and quite often results in very conflicting views. It’s not uncommon to read that one reviewer loved a particular movie and rated it very highly wh...

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Up 33%, Up 24%, Up 28% in the past 12 Months*

In the ‘House’ market, Gardenvale up 33%, Lake Wendouree up 24%, Parkville up 28%, and in the ‘Unit’ market Abbotsford up 14%, Moorabbin up 29%, Notting Hill up 27% in the past 12 months.... is that right? If I’m not mistaken, recently, the lead stories and media commentary within the press and on TV are all talking about property pric...

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Property Market ‘Too Important to Fail’

Imagine a situation where what you’re investing in, is also so critical to the overall economy in which that investment is found, that if it failed it would severely cripple the economy and standard of living of its population. You don’t really have to imagine too hard, because that is exactly the situation we have in the Australian market. ...

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Please Keep Talking Up this ‘Property Bubble’!

This month’s comment is not going to focus too much on the hype surrounding property values and what they are worth today or the next 3 months, you can read my previous comments from other newsletters about how I have been predicting 10% or more correction in values in new housing areas where the majority of the market has mortgages, and also in ...

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Investors – Start your engines…

There is always a positive to any negative.  Talk of a housing market bubble, higher interest rates, softening demand for property, worsening affordability and value decreases are all playing on the psychology of those looking to get into the property market. It is fair to report that in most markets across the capitals that we are certainly in...

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Rates on the Rise….?

I can understand why we are referred to as the ‘Lucky Country’.  Great climate, enough fertile land to produce food to support our population & provide a great quality of life and standard of living, stable government (well sort of) and the most important thing from an investors view point - an economy that has grown over the last 20 years...

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Market Softening a Good Thing

It’s with some relief that I report early signs of a softening in the Melbourne Housing market after a rapid run, where the median house prices grew by as much as 30% in the past 12 months. Increases of such magnitude are unsustainable over an extended period of time, which can lead to bubbles forming and we all know that eventually happens to bu...

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2010 Economic Outlook

Australia has defied the rest of the developed world and is looking at its 19th consecutive year of positive economic growth. Most economists are predicting that the economy will continue to grow this year and will fare much better than other economies. Gross Domestic Production (GDP) will be boosted by the planned Government infrastructure spen...

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