Smart Buying: How to Navigate Australia’s Spring/Summer Property Market

The first home buyers' deposit guarantee innovation, unveiled by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, is perfectly pitched at the first home buyer generation.

It will turbo-charge their entry into the property market with a government scheme partnering with private lenders offering finance for approved buyers.

This is literally the number one question on everyone's list that is looking at property today, and despite all the doom and gloom of the media there are some ups to a changing market.

The love affair with real estate is ingrained into the Australian psyche. You can touch it, see it, drive past it and improve it. But with home prices falling, policy questions over tax incentives and less availability of credit, perhaps the love affair with residential property investment is over. So what does this mean for commercial real estate?

Don’t rule out property investment until you’ve done the numbers.  You’ve read the books, magazine articles and reports. And you’ve been religiously checking real estate websites for properties. But when push comes to shove, you never follow through.   Don’t worry, you’re not alone. In fact, despite real estate being a national pastime, only 8.4% of Australians, or roughly 2.1 million people, owned an investment property, according to the Australian Tax Office.

Getting finance approvals has become more of a challenge and banks are now scrutinising people’s spending patterns etc with a fine tooth comb.  Make sure your pre-approvals are in place before making any offers as the time taken to get approvals have blown out considerably compared to last year.