Acreage Market Wrap - 30th May 2020

Hi, my name is Greg Vincent and welcome to this week’s Acreage Market Wrap where I share an insight into How’s The Acreage Market?

It’s been such a beautiful day for the last Saturday of the Autumn selling season and it’s been great to see lots of people back out in the market this week.

As I mentioned last week, there’s been some very irresponsible reporting in the media during this Coronavirus pandemic, for example, the Sydney Morning Herald predicted that there would be between 50,000 - 150,000 deaths in Australia due to Covid-19 and now we’re constantly seeing doomsday articles via this same media company and other media outlets reporting that the property market could drop by over 30% and yet when you read deeper into the article they’re saying the correction will be more likely around 10%, which would just put the market back to where it was towards the middle of last year.

Bad News has always sold newspapers and in attempt to get attention the focus of the media is to come up with the most Sensational Headline which they use as a hook to get people in, and with the internet and Social Media so crowded with information, nowadays a lot of the media headlines are simply ‘Click Bait’.

It’s important to read behind the headline and seek out the real data when making such a crucial lifestyle decision as buying or selling a home.

In an exclusive article this week, Leanne Pilkington, president, REINSW puts some facts in the way of predictions around a property market collapse based upon Real data vs what the doomsdayers are saying.

Here’s a link to her article…

Also, the real estate industry has joined forces this week with a positive initiative to help get the message out about what’s really happening out in the front line to help fight back against the Fake News that’s currently being reported in the media about the property market.

Real estate agents have been asked to use the hashtag #OZpropertyAlive to show the real activity that’s currently taking place across Australia.

For example, here at McGrath one of the properties that Phil Nicholas and Tayla Hutt had Open for Inspection had 36 groups through it last Saturday, and Team Nicholas sold 10 properties on their own this month out of our Rouse Hill office.

I anticipate that we will start to see many of those home owners selling up from The Hills area making the move out into the acreage market.

Many home buyers appear to be ignoring the media and are taking advantage of the record low interest rates, embracing the record government stimulus, appreciate that low stock levels will provide market stability and reshaping of the economy plus workplace arrangements with many now able to work from home is already encouraging people to make lifestyle choices.

With so much activity going on in the housing market it’s hard to fathom why the media is pumping out so much Fake News about real estate at the moment.

If you’re interested in getting the real data, check out the #OZpropertyAlive hashtag. You can search the #OZpropertyAlive hashtag across the web and on any of your social media platforms.

Also, something else I mentioned last week was that there could be a push for the Federal Government and the Foreign Investment Review Board to lift some of the current restrictions on foreign ownership, which previously had a major impact on property price growth.

We also need the government to look at continuing with immigration, you see, as Chairman of the Property Investors Council of Australia, Ben Kingsley tweeted earlier this week,

“We're looking at net overseas migration falling to 34-odd thousand next year. It was the great Professor McDonald who set a figure of between 160,000 & 210,000 per year as being what you need in this country to maintain GDP p/capita growth–Mr Morrison said. Let them in Scott! They can ISO first.”

This week we also saw the media carry on about the $60 billion blunder, rather than reporting that the country has just saved $60 billion which means that we don’t need to borrow as much money now to support Australians through the JobKeeper program, which is positive news, but then again positive news doesn’t sell newspapers.

Speaking of newspapers a lot of local newspaper publications were axed this week, which is a real sign of the times and is another reason why real estate agents need to become much more tech savvy nowadays and they need to have a greater understanding of multi-media marketing if they want to remain relevant and engage with today’s more educated consumers and property seekers.

How’s The Acreage Market?

Currently there are 437 acreage properties For Sale across the region. This total includes 251 acreage properties For Sale throughout The Hawkesbury, 126 in The Hills area and another 60 acreages For Sale within Sydney’s North-West acreage areas of Penrith and Blacktown.

There were 12 new acreage listings come onto the market this week, and the total number of listings For Sale has now only dropped by 13 overall from the peak of 450 properties For Sale that we reached at the start of May.

There were another 5 acreage properties Sold this week. Plus, there’s currently 18 acreage properties ‘Under Contract’ across the region.

Out in the field, acreage enquiries continued to increased again this week plus the ‘Off-Market Acres’ listing at 309 Fairey Road, South Windsor went ‘Under Contract’.

Plus this week I launched another ‘Off-Market Acres’ listing at 114 Fisher Road, Maraylya. It’s a terrific ranch-style homestead on 5 ridgetop acres with no flooding or power line easements. It’s excellent value with a price guide of $1.65m - $1.75m.

If you’d like to know more about the property or get already early access to all of my ‘Off-Market Acres’ properties, simply register at www.OffMarketAcres.com.au

As the end of Autumn is almost upon us for another year, I’ve put together a special Post-COVID-19 report about how the acreage market is being impacted and it will feature in the soon to be released copy of The Acreage Report 2020 (Winter edition) which will be available to download early June.

I’m looking forward to sharing this upcoming edition of The Acreage Report with you. If you’d like to be amongst the first to get your hands on this special Post-COVID-19 acreage report, then simply register at www.TheAcreageReport.com.au or alternatively, when you register for ‘Off-Market Acres’ you’ll also immediately receive access to the current edition of The Acreage Report 2020 (Autumn edition)

The Acreage Report features statistics about what's happening in the Hawkesbury, Hills & Sydney’s North West acreage market. Plus you also get instant access to a copy of The McGrath Report 2020 which features exclusive insights from one of Australia’s leading property experts, John McGrath.

So, that’s it for this week’s Acreage Market Wrap. If you’ve got any questions about anything I’ve shared this week or would like to discuss any of your acreage plans with me, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks for watching, stay safe and bye for now.

Regards

Greg Vincent