State-by-State Property Trends in Australia: Property Investment & First Home Buying in 2025 with Eliza Owen from CoreLogic

Is the Aussie Property Market Really That Bad? Let’s Find Out!

Struggling to wrap your head around the wild world of Australian property right now? You’re not alone! In this episode, we're joined by property data queen Eliza Owen, Head of Research at CoreLogic, to break down exactly what’s going on.

We’re talking:
✨ Why it’s so much harder to buy a home today compared to previous generations
✨ What’s driving property prices to keep rising (even with those scary interest rates!)
✨ The state-by-state lowdown from booming Brisbane to sliding Sydney
✨ Regional hotspots you might not expect (spoiler: Townsville is on fire 🔥)
✨ Tips for first-home buyers, including what to do if your dream city feels out of reach
✨ Plus, Eliza’s predictions for the next 5 years and where the opportunities could be

Whether you're saving for your first home, thinking of investing, or just love a property chat, this episode is packed with insights to help you feel informed and in control, no crystal ball required.

🎧 Hit play for your ultimate property market update!

This episode is brought to you by InvestorKit, Australia’s #1 Buyers Agency for 2023 and 2024. They specialise in helping investors find high-growth properties utilising industry leading AI and data driven research process across Australia. 70%+ of the properties they purchase are off-market and they have consistently outperformed national average capital growth rates by over 49%. Whether you’re looking to build your property portfolio or secure your first investment. Check them out here.

CHAPTERS

00:00 - Welcome + Introducing Eliza Owen from CoreLogic
01:39 - How Has the Property Market Changed from Boomers to Now?
03:57 - What’s Driving the Property Market?
5:52 - Is There a Housing Shortage in Australia?
06:37 - Current Property Market Trends
08:00 - State-by-State Breakdown: Who’s Hot and Who’s Not
08:17 - Queensland
10:40 - Regional Queensland (hello, Townsville!)
13:27 - Western Australia
13:59 - South Australia
14:34 - Northern Territory
15:13 - Tasmania
15:58 - Victoria
18:29 - New South Wales
19:40 - ACT
21:16 - Tips for First Home Buyers
24:00 - What’s Next? Predictions for the Next 5 Years
25:58 - Why Property is a Long-Term Game
27:10 - How Eliza Got into Property Data
29:01 - Eliza’s Book Recommendation
29:36 - Wrap Up + Where to Find More

CONNECT WITH ELIZA OWEN

Corelogic Website: https://www.corelogic.com.au/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliza-owen-2554ab65/
Curious about your property's value? Explore CoreLogic's tools: https://www.corelogic.com.au/our-data/mapping-market

CONNECT WITH LADIES FINANCE CLUB

Join our free Facebook group - Ladies Finance Club Money Chat
Website: https://www.ladiesfinanceclub.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ladiesfinanceclub/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ladies-finance-club/

TAKEAWAYS

• Home ownership has become significantly harder for younger generations.
  
• The median home value in Australia has risen dramatically over the years.
  
• Supply and demand dynamics are crucial in understanding property prices.
  
• Queensland is currently experiencing a property boom due to population growth.
  
• Investment properties make up a significant portion of the market.
  
• First home buyers are increasingly looking at alternative markets.
  
• The property market is cyclical, with ups and downs over time.
  
• Long-term investment strategies are essential for success in real estate.
  
• Understanding individual circumstances is key for potential buyers.
  
• Eliza's passion for economics led her to a career in property data.

SOUND BITES

"Home ownership has definitely become a lot harder."
"It's not you, it's society."
"Western Australia is the highest growth market."
"Achievable? 100%."
"Property is a long-term game."
"It's a very stable investment."

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Molly: Eliza, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. It's really great to be here. So you work for a big company called Core Logic, and I know if you are working in the property space or you are a longtime investor, you'll probably be very familiar with Core Logic.

[00:00:21] But if you don't, and you are, this is the first time you've heard of this company, Eliza, could you just give us a little bit of a understanding of what is CoreLogic and what do you guys do?

[00:00:30] Aliza: Absolutely. CoreLogic specializes in residential property data and analytics, so things like the potential value of a property to purchase potential rent value, listing sales information, and really using those analytics to tell a story of what's going on in the property market.

[00:00:53] So you might see us every now and again in the news talking about whether property prices are going up or down. [00:01:00] But we also do a lot of services for the real estate sector, the banking and finance sector, insurance government, and there's a big kind of business to business component that we do as well.

[00:01:12] Molly: Awesome. Okay, great. So what I'm really curious to know is how has the property landscape changed from the boomer generation to now? Obviously like it's been quite big because we use the stories where the like only used to need like, you know, two times my salary and I could buy a property and now it's quite a different picture.

[00:01:33] So how is it different for. I guess the generation trying to get in at the moment.

[00:01:39] Aliza: Yeah, so home ownership has definitely become a lot harder, particularly for young people and for lower income cohorts. Yeah. Part of that is because property has become so expensive in Australia over time. Mm. Back in the mid nineties, the median home value across all houses [00:02:00] and units was about $120,000.

[00:02:03] Or like you say, about two to three times the average household income. As of November, 2024. The median home value across all houses and units, across all parts of Australia is $815,000. Wow. Or about eight times gross. Average household income.

[00:02:23] Molly: Yeah.

[00:02:24] Aliza: And you know, if you're looking at just the capital cities, the median house value is now over a million dollars.

[00:02:30] So it's not just Sydney. That's a big million dollar market anymore. It's quite common to have lots of million dollar pockets in our capital cities. So that's all come with things like people getting into the property market later in life. Mm-hmm. Average first home buyer age is up from about 27 years old, 30 years ago, is now about 34 years old.

[00:02:52] The home ownership rate is lower. So in the mid nineties, about 70% of Australians own their own home. Today it's [00:03:00] about 66%. Yeah, and the big change within that as well is that because property prices are so much more expensive, you need more finance to access the market A lot more households that own their own home are mortgaged.

[00:03:13] Yeah. Those mortgage terms have generally gotten longer over time as well. I know even when I started in the property industry, like 10 years ago, a 25 year mortgage was pretty standard. Yeah. Now it's absolutely, 30 years is the standard for first home buyers.

[00:03:31] Molly: Yeah. Wow. So if people are feeling like it's a little bit hard.

[00:03:35] It's probably because it is, yeah. It's not you. It's not you. Society. Yeah. It's the foreign environment. Yeah. So what are some of those major, I guess, driving changes in the market? Is it, is it interest rates? Is it immigration supply? Is it government policy? What are some of those big factors driving that?

[00:03:57] Aliza: Great question, and I think you've definitely [00:04:00] hit on a few there, Molly. I think at the end of the day, it kind of comes back to supply and demand very broadly. Yeah. But demand can mean anything from income. Okay. If income goes up, people have more money to spend on housing. We definitely saw that during the pandemic where fiscal stimulus, the households led to people getting larger properties, larger rentals.

[00:04:23] Access to finance. Mm-hmm. So whether that means lower interest rates or mortgage is cheaper, whether it means a government scheme, like a low deposit home loan scheme, or a government grant. Population growth is a big one. Yeah. On the demand side, right? Yes. Queensland is a really good example of where interstate migration hit this massive spike through the pandemic.

[00:04:47] Yeah. Pre Covid annual interstate migration to Queensland was like 17,000 a year. That showed up to a peak of 52,000. In the year to March, 2022, people move [00:05:00] quickly. Housing isn't built quickly. So it's that sort of supply demand difference that that made. Queensland property prices go up so much. And the really interesting one too is household composition.

[00:05:11] Like this was a more recent demand element that we saw through the pandemic where share houses in particular broke up. A lot of people spread out across the market. There was this tiny downward shift in average household size that led to a big increase in demand for housing.

[00:05:30] Molly: Yeah.

[00:05:30] Aliza: The RBA estimates that it added to housing demand by about 140,000 properties.

[00:05:36] Wow. That's a lot. Just little change. Yeah. And then supply basically comes back to housing construction and listings, volumes if, if you're in the purchasing market. Yeah.

[00:05:47] Molly: So would you say there is a housing shortage in Australia at the moment? I. Is that what the data shows? Yeah.

[00:05:52] Aliza: I mean, again, it, it's a hard thing to measure because if you built a lot more houses, who's to say that people just wouldn't spread out?[00:06:00]

[00:06:00] Further across the market, but Housing Australia definitely reports a housing shortage. I think things like lack of home ownership over time, rising rates of homelessness, rising rental prices, those things definitely indicate shortage of housing relative to population and population growth. Okay, interesting.

[00:06:23] Molly: If we do a little like overall, and then maybe we'll break it down state by state, but like what kind of trends have you noticed recently in the Australian property market? Have there been any like surprises or standout patterns? Yeah,

[00:06:37] Aliza: so I mean, most surprising is probably the fact that Australian home values have been really resilient.

[00:06:45] Molly: Yeah.

[00:06:46] Aliza: So we talk about. Interest rates being one of these elements around access to finance that should maybe dampen demand for property given interest rates went from this underlying cash rate level of just [00:07:00] 0.1%, which is the lowest historic setting of the RBA cash rate all the way up to 4.35%. Mm-hmm.

[00:07:09] In the space of two years. So that should be taking people out of the housing market, but instead Australia's housing market has continued to rise through all that. We kind of put that back to the mismatch between supply and demand of dwellings. Fundamentally just not enough supply. And so home values have risen for the past 22 months consecutively.

[00:07:32] Wow. On the national level, they're up about 5.5% over the past year. Beneath that, there's a lot of diversity in terms of the performance of the different capital cities, states and territories.

[00:07:43] Molly: Yeah, so great. If you are a property owner, not so great if you're trying to get into the property market as a first time buyer.

[00:07:50] So if we can, would we be able to do a little state by state breakdown and just how that state is going, and I guess if there's. Maybe [00:08:00] any region's worth watching or, yeah, just what's hot, what's not. So maybe we'll start with the hottest one, and maybe you'll let me know if maybe I'm wrong here. But from what I've heard and what I've seen and what I've read, Queensland is pretty hot at the moment.

[00:08:17] Aliza: Absolutely. So there are three stellar performers of the states and territories right now. That's Queensland, south Australia and Western Australia. Queensland really benefited from a massive boom in population and kind of under supply of housing through the pandemic.

[00:08:34] Molly: Yeah, I remember people like they were buying property without even seeing like Victorians were buying property without even seeing it and just like getting out and moving to Queensland asap.

[00:08:43] A hundred

[00:08:43] Aliza: percent. So the shock that population shock relative to a construction sector, a real estate sector councils that just weren't used to this volume, really created that urgency and pushed values up massively. [00:09:00] Brisbane home values are almost 70% higher than they were in March, 2020. Gosh, 70%. That is huge.

[00:09:07] A hundred percent. And, and in the last year alone, Queensland property values have continued to increase 11.6%. Wow. The only reprieve for bias is that the pace of growth is slowing. Yeah. So you might think of it as a white hot market that's got to like a red hot market.

[00:09:29] Molly: Yeah.

[00:09:30] Aliza: And over the. Spring period of 2024, we have seen a little bit of accrual of listings.

[00:09:37] So listings, volumes finally starting to lift a little bit, and that's probably because there's less buyer competition now that property prices are so expensive. Oh, okay. And the last, I think, really wild call out for the Brisbane property market is that, so prior to the pandemic, the median house value across Brisbane was sitting at about $600,000.

[00:09:59] Mm-hmm. [00:10:00] It's now $975,000. Mm-hmm. And it's pit like Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth. It's now the third most expensive house market behind Sydney and Canberra.

[00:10:13] Molly: Wow. Interesting. And then for like regional Queensland, like, 'cause I know when we did our property road show recently, we were in Townsville and people were like, oh my God.

[00:10:24] It's like even the locals were struggling to get into Martin. 'cause they're like, it is just so hot at the moment. And then, um, I know there was talk of like some of those other regionals, Rockham Bundaberg. Is that something that. You are seeing as well that kind of, that growth in those different regional areas certainly is.

[00:10:40] Yeah. It's funny you

[00:10:41] Aliza: mentioned Townsville because that's currently the highest growth property market over the past 12 months of any market across Australia.

[00:10:50] Molly: Yeah.

[00:10:50] Aliza: Wow. Yeah, so referring to sort of the broader Townsville region, not, not necessarily just the suburb. Yeah, but we call them SA four [00:11:00] regions, these kind of larger groupings of property markets.

[00:11:03] It was the highest growth market of the past 12 months of about 25%. That comes back to, I think again, that kind of increase in population. You know, there's that current army restructure where more people are being deployed to Townsville from South Australia, for example, so that might have something to do with it.

[00:11:23] I think also the fact that we're at a point in the market now where relatively affordable towns. Seeing this big surge in demand because it's what people can afford in a high cost of living environment, high interest rate environment. Yeah. It's skewing a lot of buyers to cheaper markets and that's why cheaper markets have the faster growth right now.

[00:11:45] Molly: Yeah, and I dunno if you would have the data on this, but I'm just interested more from like a listener perspective of what the split of people buying to live versus buying to rent property investors would be. Or what would maybe like estimated guess be. [00:12:00] Yeah, so property

[00:12:00] Aliza: investors are fairly prominent in the market at the moment.

[00:12:05] If you look at the amount of mortgage finance that was secured for new housing purchases back in September, about 40% of it was for investment property purchases. Okay. 40? Mm-hmm. Yeah. First home buyers did make up a decent portion of the market back in the early stages of Covid. Yeah. But they've come, they've come down now and they're, they're continuing to drop off a little bit as property becomes less affordable.

[00:12:30] Yeah. For some first home buyers, about 7% of first home buyers in the past year.

[00:12:36] Molly: Yeah.

[00:12:37] Aliza: Were what we call rent vest.

[00:12:38] Molly: Yeah.

[00:12:39] Aliza: So people buying property to rent out to someone else instead of owning their first home, because that's a more feasible way for them to access the property market.

[00:12:48] Molly: We actually just did an episode all about rent vesting.

[00:12:51] So if listeners are wanting to learn more about that one, check it out. And Eliza, I just have to say as well, how impressed I am with all your knowledge. It is literally like talking [00:13:00] to Property Data Chat GB four. You know me so much. I mean, obviously this is what you do for a job, but wow.

[00:13:07] Aliza: Oh, thank you so much.

[00:13:08] I may have a cheeky Excel spreadsheet on the go, but for a lot of these things, you, you try and just remember the stats.

[00:13:16] Molly: Yeah. As

[00:13:16] Aliza: they refresh each month. Yeah,

[00:13:18] Molly: totally. So we looked at Queensland. So Queensland's a hot market. What about, you mentioned also W so Western Australia and South Australia.

[00:13:27] Aliza: Western Australia is the highest growth market of the states and territories.

[00:13:32] The thing to remember about this market is it came off a massive downturn between 2014 and 2019, which was kind of the bust period of the mining boom of bust. Mm-hmm. So since Covid, it has also seen values rise roughly 70% and in the past year alone, values were up 20.5%. Mm-hmm. For South Australia, it's a similar story, values up 14%.

[00:13:59] Over the [00:14:00] past year. It has seen very strong growth since the pandemic as well. After the 2010s were a very slow, steady period. Mm-hmm. For the South Australian housing market, I would say growth barely kept up with inflation. But for each of these states, the big changes have been. For WA in Queensland, certainly a resources boom in upswing in the commodity cycle.

[00:14:23] And for South Australia, I think just more positive internal migration trends through remote work people Moving from Victoria to South Australia is a big one as well. Awesome.

[00:14:34] Molly: And then maybe if we look at some of those smaller areas like the Northern Territory and Tasmania, what are you seeing there? So the Northern Territory has

[00:14:43] Aliza: been fairly flat, literally no change in home values over the past year in a relatively high inflationary environment as well.

[00:14:53] So this is a bit of a subdued market with unfavorable. Internal migration [00:15:00] trends.

[00:15:00] Molly: Mm-hmm. Any unfavorable migration trends? Does that mean people aren't moving there? Not

[00:15:05] Aliza: only that, but more people are leaving. Are leaving than moving there. Yeah. It's the same story with Tasmania, although that is starting to improve.

[00:15:13] Yeah. And Victoria through the pandemic also had a massive loss of people from more people leaving the state than entering. Yeah. Although through the start of 2024 that it just started to even out.

[00:15:25] Molly: Yeah.

[00:15:26] Aliza: It's worth noting as well. That's just the internal migration trend. Yeah. Obviously overseas migration has picked up massively since we reopened borders in 2022.

[00:15:36] Yeah. But most people when they first come to Australia are gonna be renting. Roughly 60 to 70% of new overseas arrivals to Australia rent when they first get here. Yeah. So that's a big boom for the rental market, and it's the reason why in most areas, rents are still rising, even if property values are flat or falling in some [00:16:00] areas.

[00:16:00] Okay. Interesting.

[00:16:02] Molly: And I feel like Victoria is like, it's got a lot going on. Yeah. What's happening in Victoria? So Victoria's definitely in a downswing by downswing. Properties are going, property prices are going down, or people just. Yeah,

[00:16:19] Aliza: that's exactly right. So an upswing would, we would describe as like values increasing.

[00:16:24] The downswing phase of a cycle is where either you're getting a, a rapid reduction in the pace of increases or values are falling. So values are falling in Victoria, they're down two and a half percent over the past year. They're down about 5% from the recent record high. Mm-hmm. Which was in March of 2022.

[00:16:46] Yeah. The same for Tasmania. By the way. Tasmanian home values are down nearly 12% from their high in early 2022. So for Victoria, they had a lot of population. Loss through the [00:17:00] pandemic. They had an increase from the start of 2024. There were some increases to holdings for investment properties, which basically means, um, more people would were charged tax through land tax through a reduction in the threshold at which you pay land tax on investment properties.

[00:17:17] Yeah. There's also longer term been a lot of construction across Victoria, which is kind of a good thing, right? Yeah. We, we talk about more housing supply to make housing more affordable.

[00:17:27] Molly: Yeah.

[00:17:28] Aliza: Victoria has seen more dwelling completions than any other state or territory over the past 15 years. Okay.

[00:17:34] Whether it's like inner city unit development or new house and land on the fringes of, of the Melbourne metro, there's a lot more supply to absorb demand. So those factors have contributed and ultimately it is making purchasing prices more affordable.

[00:17:49] Molly: Yeah. Which is kind of what we want. So that is quite interesting.

[00:17:53] 'cause yeah, I guess I hear a lot of negativity around Victoria, but actually they're building more houses, which, um, [00:18:00] fortunately for property investors, that's not gonna boost numbers. But for everyday Aussies trying to get into the market.

[00:18:06] Aliza: That's a good thing. Totally. It just depends what your goals are when it comes to property.

[00:18:12] Yeah. And when it comes to Victoria, they actually have the highest share of first term buyer finance secured on a month to month basis at about 35% of all first term buyer finance.

[00:18:24] Molly: Okay. Wow, that's really interesting to know. And New South Wales,

[00:18:29] Aliza: new South Wales. So that property market, again, is a little bit in a race of its own, so yeah.

[00:18:36] The New South Wales property market is higher overall over the past year. Value's up 3.2%. Yeah. But we are starting to see this market, particularly Sydney. Mm-hmm. Enter a bit of a downswing. So home values across Sydney, were down 0.5% over spring. Mm-hmm. And that's the first quarterly decline we've seen [00:19:00] since early 2023.

[00:19:01] When the market reacted to a rise in interest rates and Yeah. And started picking up again. So for Sydney, it's definitely gone from a seller's market to a buyer's market over the course of the year. Yeah. If you are playing in that Sydney price range, which, you know, a median house is $1.5 million, so, but for those in that price point, I guess it's, it's a good buying opportunity at the moment.

[00:19:25] Molly: Okay, great. And just finishing up with, don't worry, we did not forget about you, a CT, um, a CT, because, so you said before a CT is one of the third most expensive places to buy a home in Australia

[00:19:40] Aliza: for a house. For a house. Yeah. So the a CT is the second most expensive house market. It's actually much more reasonable when it comes to the unit market and.

[00:19:49] Unlike most parts of Australia where house values go up and and unit values tend to get dragged up with them. A CT has this dynamic where house [00:20:00] values are high, but because the unit market is so well supplied, you could say oversupplied, from a market perspective, it's pushing unit values down. Unit values were down almost 3% over the past 12 months, while house values rose 1% and it's a very two speed market compared to other parts of the country.

[00:20:22] Molly: Interesting. So again, I guess it depends on what you are looking for in that property. If you're looking for a home to live in, that's good news 'cause you're gonna get something at a a lower price. But if you're looking to be an investor, then that's when you'd wanna be looking at those more high growth areas.

[00:20:39] I. Definitely when we look at

[00:20:41] Aliza: investor activity, historically, it's very closely related to strong rates of capital growth. Mm-hmm. Even where the rental return isn't that good. So for most investors, they seem to be chasing that high growth and that can often come from. [00:21:00] Relatively affordable markets that have the potential, whether because they're going through this transformational population change or industrial change or an uplift in the resources sector, for example.

[00:21:11] Yeah. That's where you can kind of latch on and get that high growth. Awesome.

[00:21:16] Molly: So I guess then, and that that might have kind of answered the next question, but around just like advice for first home buyers who we get a lot listening, if they're trying to enter that market kind of in next year, I guess, is it still achievable?

[00:21:30] Are there still properties out there for like under half a mil or 500,000 or, yeah, I guess what strategies could they consider? Because maybe 1.5 in Sydney isn't, you know, isn't achievable. Not achievable for some people. A hundred

[00:21:45] Aliza: percent. So I'm a big fan of looking for markets. I call them like spillover markets where it might not be where you have your heart set on buying, but perhaps it's the next most affordable market.

[00:21:58] Molly: Yeah.

[00:21:58] Aliza: And other people have a [00:22:00] similar mindset that can bring growth, population growth, and transformation to an area. Yeah. I think more broadly, you just really need to consider your individual circumstance, which I know sounds like a bit of a cop out, but for example, if you're thinking about whether you should be getting into the property market in 2025, yeah, maybe you need to weigh up the opportunity cost of that.

[00:22:27] Are you gonna be renting for another year? Are you able to live with your family rent free? And then maybe it's worthwhile staying at home and saving up a larger deposit that can help you get a, a bigger budget. Yeah, so those sorts of considerations for the individual are really important. I. The other thing I would say is ultimately don't worry too much about short-term movements in the property market.

[00:22:49] Yeah. If you hear that the property market is going down, or values are falling, there is some risk buying into a falling market because if you secure a property and then its value goes [00:23:00] down, then you're at risk of, you know, negative equity. But as long as you can afford the mortgage and you've borrowed conservatively, and you're budgeting well, that shouldn't matter.

[00:23:12] Property is a long-term game. The other thing about buying in a falling market is that, you know, you might get better negotiating power for, for a good price on the property. But then the con, so I bought in a downswing and I found that the con was there wasn't as many properties on the market because people don't wanna sell.

[00:23:31] Yeah. In a falling market, if you buy in a rising market, it's harder to negotiate. It's harder to get the price that you want, but you should find that there's lots of supply and lots of choice on the market because a lot of people wanna sell in a strong market. So there's pros and cons to buying it anytime in the cycle.

[00:23:48] Yeah. You just do when it's right for you. Awesome.

[00:23:52] Molly: And if we kind of look at the next five years, are there any kind of, I mean, I know [00:24:00] everyone always wants to know like, where's the best place to buy and no one crystal ball, but like are there any kind of like key factors or like key things that you say could impact the property market in the next five years or any kind of hotspots that you think we're gonna see?

[00:24:15] More. Yeah. Like is there gonna be a certain state that people gotta be moving to? Again, I know you're not a psychic and you don't have a crystal, but would love your take on it. Yeah. Cool.

[00:24:24] Aliza: I guess I see the opportunities that come from affordability and how people react to that.

[00:24:31] Molly: Yeah.

[00:24:31] Aliza: So for example, we talk about Victoria and Tasmania in these downswings that are sitting well below their peaks.

[00:24:38] Yeah. Melbourne is still one of the best cities in the world. Yeah. Tasmania, over the long term, is still gonna be a really popular region for retirees, for tourism. So I think what you would eventually see is that those markets become cheap enough that people are willing to buy in again, and that's what kicks off the upswing phase of the [00:25:00] cycle, and that's where you can kind of benefit from that value increase.

[00:25:03] Molly: Yeah.

[00:25:03] Aliza: So that's something to consider is looking at where values have fallen, but also where there's good economic fundamentals. Mm-hmm. That can help support longer term growth and might be a good buying opportunity in the short term. I think for 2025, there probably will be that seesaw effect where you get markets like Victoria and Tasmania start to stabilize or pick up a little bit.

[00:25:29] But then those really high growth markets across wa, south Australia and Queensland, people might be dropping off from those markets because they're just not as affordable as they once were. And you might find that triggers migration back to Victoria, for example.

[00:25:45] Molly: Okay, great. Okay, awesome. And so I guess kind of from that, and I might be wrong in saying this, but the moral of the story is if you are buying, be a long-term investor.

[00:25:58] Aliza: A hundred percent. When it comes to [00:26:00] property, it is a long-term investment. We know this because a lot of investors initially make losses on, on the property that they buy. That's why we have negative gearing in place as a policy to support property investors. Yeah. So it's definitely a long-term game and it's also a very stable one.

[00:26:19] We have very prudent home lending around property, even though it is a pretty highly leveraged asset. We have things like a three percentage point serviceability buffer, so you have to be able to show you can repay a loan even if interest rates go up three percentage points. There's very low rates of mortgage arrears, and as a result, there have been, at least at a high level, very low incidence of big losses in values over time.

[00:26:48] It's not the same for everywhere. There have been definitely boom and bust markets in the mining space in WA, for example, but generally speaking, it's a pretty safe asset, which makes it very popular as [00:27:00] well.

[00:27:01] Molly: Brilliant. That was all my property questions, so thank you so much. So that's been so insightful and definitely getting that state by state breakdown.

[00:27:10] Just a couple of quick questions that we ask our different guests, and the first one is just more how did you get into the area of. Property data, is it something that you loved as a, as a kid, or is it something, 'cause a lot of the time we speak to women working in finances, they'll be like, I fell into it, or the funny story and this is the reason it happened.

[00:27:31] But would love just like the high level, like how did you. End up working in property data. Yeah.

[00:27:39] Aliza: So for me it started with the love of economics. Yeah. Economics is, I think it really helps you get a sense of control on a chaotic world. Yeah. Because it's theories of like resource allocation and how people organize themselves when you have limited.

[00:27:57] Ability to, to supply things [00:28:00] for unlimited wants, right? Yeah. So I studied economics and then as I was studying economics, I had a part-time job in a property data company, literally on the phone collecting recent sales information from real estate agents. And it just kind of grew from there. And I've been head of research for, uh, Cologic Australia for the past five years.

[00:28:21] Wow. I get paid to read and write and research and answer questions about our housing market, and it is seriously the coolest job. I'm incredibly lucky.

[00:28:33] Molly: Oh my God. I love that. And I love when people love their jobs. It makes me very happy and I always think if you don't love your job or you don't love what you do, then you are the only one who can make that change.

[00:28:43] Big. Thank you so much, Eliza. And the last, last question we ask everyone is, are you reading anything great at the moment or have you, have you read anything great in the last year that you would recommend? Oh, and it doesn't have to necessarily be property, it can be anything related. [00:29:00]

[00:29:01] Aliza: So one thing that I read not too recently I guess, but that I loved was 100 Years of Solitude.

[00:29:08] It sounds kind of heavy. I don't know if you've read it Molly, but the title sounds so intense. But it's this beautiful work of like classic literature by Gabrielle Garcia Marquez, and it's, uh, magical realism. So it's got like ghosts and butterflies and. Like all these amazing things going on. And if you're not a big reader, they recently just dropped a televised version on Netflix.

[00:29:31] Oh. So you can just go ahead and watch it and it's really beautiful and I always recommend that book.

[00:29:36] Molly: Amazing. Oh, thank you so much, Eliza, for your time. And we'll pop in all the links where people can check out any of the awesome articles you've written and links to call Logic as well. Thank you again.

[00:29:47] Thank you so much.

KEYWORDS

CoreLogic, property data, home ownership, market trends, investment strategies, Australia real estate, generational changes, property market analysis, housing supply, first home buyers