What are the factors that will affect future property values in WA?

Transcript

Peter Fletcher

[00:00:00] Peter Fletcher: Welcome to the WA Property Q& A, the podcast where I explore the ins and outs of buying property in Western Australia. I’m your host, Peter Fletcher, and each week I interview local property experts to help you to develop a deep understanding of the nuances of buying property in WA. From markup trends to legal considerations, no topic is off limits.

But before we dive in, a friendly reminder, while we provide valuable information, it’s important to note that nothing discussed in this podcast should be construed as personal investment advice. Always remember to seek the appropriate professional advice for your specific circumstances. Now let’s get started and unlock the secrets to successful property buying in WA.

Welcome to another episode of the WA Property Q& A podcast. I’m Peter Fletcher and I’m excited to say that with me today is none other than Tim Lawless from CoreLogic. So Tim is the executive research director of CoreLogic’s Asia Pacific project. Research division where he leads a team of experts in data and economics across Australia and New Zealand.

He has over 20 years of experience in analysing and reporting on national housing trends and the factors that influence them. As a leading authority, and he genuinely is, on residential property, Tim provides insightful and authoritative Commentary on the state of the real estate market and the interplay between housing demographics and economics.

He’s a trusted source of information and advice for various stakeholders including government bodies, policy makers, corporate entities and consumers in the property, banking, financial, insurance, and real estate. Tim’s research is widely featured in Australian and global media outlets, and he is a sought after keynote speaker at various events and conferences.

He is passionate about telling the constantly evolving story of Australia’s housing markets from both a macro and micro perspective using the rich data and analytics that CoreLogic provides. I think they gave you the long version. Sorry about that. Welcome. It’s so good to have you here. So. Tim, today I want to talk about the factors that are going to impact the WA property market over the next 12 to 24 months, thereabouts.

And you know, it I want to avoid being in any sort of predicting mode. We’re not Nostradamus, let’s face it. But I do note that REWA recently came out and

said that they anticipate, they say that. 20% growth in over the next 12 months would not be out of the question. Your thoughts on that and what are the factors that you think might shape the WA property market?

[00:02:47] Tim Lawless: Well, to see a 20 percent growth rate over the year means the market is going to slow down because we’re already seeing a 20 percent growth rate in Perth housing values over the past 12 months. In fact, about 21%. And it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down. If anything, it’s holding at about 2 percent month on month growth.

So. You can annualize that to 24%, you know, but probably the market will slow down. I mean, this rate of growth is unsustainable. It’s stunning, isn’t it? It’s stunning. It’s a lot of people compare this to the mining boom saying, ah, the market’s getting set up for a massive crash because we’re seeing the same sort of thing during the mining boom.

It’s not the mining boom. During the mining boom, we’re seeing housing values rising for a little while. They’re at about 40 percent per annum back in 2006. And of course, that was really influenced by a huge amount of infrastructure investments. Yeah, the mining boom was really an infrastructure boom.

And when that infrastructure investment completed, then obviously you don’t need as many people to You know, man, the the mind is to build it. So unemployment started to wind down investment activity started to wind down. Population growth fell off. All those things that happened that, that saw the market go through a long slump.

It’s nothing like that at the moment. In fact, this market is still quite affordable when you compare it to the Eastern States, Eastern capitals. We’re seeing housing values in Perth about 60 percent lower than Perth than Sydney. Mm hmm. But back in, say, March of 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, the difference was about 100%.

So Sydney prices are about twice they are in Perth now, they’re about 60 percent higher. So there is still a pretty decent affordability gap in this marketplace that I think is going to help to keep a floor under the rate of growth, as well as the fact the economy is pretty strong. Jobs growth is leading the nation.

Unemployment still below 4%. All these things really suggest to me the market still has some legs, although I wouldn’t expect values to continue rising at 2 percent indefinitely, that’s for sure.

[00:04:46] Peter Fletcher: I kind of hope that they don’t, because as much as property owners and I’m one you’d like to see you, you, the price of property goes up.

It always, you know, booms always follow busts and no one wants to see that.

[00:05:00] Tim Lawless: Yeah, that’s exactly right. A steady as she goes market would be ideal. The unfortunate reality is. WA or Perth does have what seems to be much more pronounced cycles that the volatility we see in the market through, you know, the mining boom is probably the best example, but outside of the mining boom, we generally see very strong cycles in the WA market.

Inevitably, what happens is either affordability starts to become eroded or you see a significant supply response. Not seeing anything like that at the moment. The supply side of things is still extraordinarily tight, whichever way you want to measure it, be it. The number of listings in the market is about 40 percent below average at the moment across Perth at a time when transactional activity is about 30 percent above average.

That’s why we’re getting this significant price growth. But then if you look at supply over, say, the next couple of years, the earliest phase that is approvals, which just starting to edge a little bit higher now, but still well below average. So it looks to me like there’s no supply response really in the immediate wings at the moment, which, again, is going to see this upwards pressure.

persisting for some time yet.

[00:06:05] Peter Fletcher: There’s about 19, I think, thousand properties in construction in WA. They’re going to come on stream as houses, as accommodation, well, shall we say in the next 12 months, you’d hope. Is that going to play into the value, property value equation, do you think?

[00:06:24] Tim Lawless: It’s probably, Not really touching the sides, to be honest. If you look at the construction sector in WA, I mean, well, even around the country, it’s hurting. Pretty bad, just because of construction costs being as high as what they are. Even though construction costs aren’t rising rapidly anymore, they’re not falling.

And there’s this margin pressure that’s emerged because of the previous rapid hike in materials costs. But now it’s more about labor costs and labor availability. as well. So we’ve got this situation where builders are facing

compressed margins. It’s pretty hard to turn a profit. They’re finding it really hard to attract staff and keep them, particularly qualified trades.

And they’re also finding it hard to hold a property. Say, if they’re not able to commence straight away because interest rates are so high, the holding costs are significant. And they’re also competing with the non residential sector as well. There’s a lot of infrastructure projects underway that generally compete with the same sort of trades and human resources.

[00:07:21] Peter Fletcher: Mm hmm. Yes, it’s a crazy market. And the stats the CoreLogic stats that I was reading this morning was that the, our employment rate is very strong here in WA. What? What do you think is driving that? Do you think, can you see that continuing for some time yet?

[00:07:42] Tim Lawless: Yeah, it’s it’s the fastest rate of jobs growth in the nation from memory, just a bit over four percent unemployment rates a little bit less than four percent.

You got population growth that’s leading the nation as well, a little bit above three percent against a national average of about two and a half percent. So what’s really driving that that jobs growth? may come as a bit of a surprise. It’s not the mining sector, it’s healthcare. So that’s definitely the biggest you know, jobs growth sector is healthcare.

Then you’ve got construction professional and scientific services will be another realm. So, you know, a lot of people immediately think it’s the mining sector whenever they hear about a booming economy in WA. And of course the mining sector is still really important. It’s the biggest contributor to the gross state product, but it’s good to see the economy is diversifying and that’s not through any just sort of, you know, chance.

This is a focused dedication from the state government to diversify the economy. So yeah, it’s, if you go back to the last couple of budgets, you can see that real focus on diversification, economic diversification has been a real theme and no doubt we’re, meeting today, I think on the eve of the state budget being announced this afternoon.

And no doubt you’ll probably see more about economic diversification, just really trying to make sure the road’s being paved for down the track when maybe iron ore or lithium or whatever part of the mining sector isn’t performing as strongly as it is at the moment.

[00:09:06] Peter Fletcher: That’s smart strategy on behalf of the government, you’d think?

[00:09:10] Tim Lawless: It’s absolutely. I think maybe compare it back to the Middle East, right? They know they can’t just keep on pulling oil out of the ground forever. It’s a finite commodity and, or finite resource, and they’ve done very well to diversify their economy. WA I think is on the same sort of track, maybe just baby steps at the moment.

[00:09:30] Peter Fletcher: Yeah, we are still, you know, very beholden to especially iron ore and to, to another extent, you know, gold and other precious metals. So yeah. And how about on the subject of iron ore I was talking to a local real estate agent who has been involved in a little bit connected to WA politics.

They’re connected to every, everyone, let’s face it. And he was saying that that the price of iron ore was a little bit of a concern to some people. Like it’s come down from off a high of about 140 and I think it dropped down to around about a hundred since bounced up a little bit. Your thoughts on the impact of the iron ore price on the and how it might impact on property values.

[00:10:15] Tim Lawless: Yeah, I’m not sure what the impact is going to be on property values, to be honest. You know, the price of iron ore will do what the price of iron ore does. It’s not a controllable thing. Right. So, and if you think about it from memory, maybe this is out of date, but I think the cost of production for iron ore was around 30 a ton.

And if they’re selling it for 100 it’s still a pretty good profit margin. Mm hmm. You would think, but I think what happens when say the cost of the commodity comes down, it probably doesn’t impact too much on the job sector. What it probably impacts is on future infrastructure development plans and capital investment.

So I don’t think you’d start to see mines closing down unless. mining became unprofitable. It’s still highly profitable. But probably what would happen is you’d start to see maybe a slowdown or a cancellation or, you know, rethinking of expansion plans of new mines of maintenance projects, that type of thing, which of course has an impact on the broader economy because that’s generally where you see the jobs being created is in those big infrastructure projects.

[00:11:17] Peter Fletcher: Yeah, and ongoing, you want mines to sort of continue and you know, to keep those jobs in, in, in the state. So. Hmm. Now,

talk to me, Tim about immigrate, migration. Because you, if you, even a casual visitor to to Instagram, there’s any number of people who love to confess the sins of migration.

You know, they say, well, is it any wonder that our property prices are so sky high because the government have let so many people into the country and like, you know, it’s just all, the fault of the migrate of W Australia’s migration policy. Is that the case? Or are we seeing some sort of correction here from COVID days?

[00:12:06] Tim Lawless: Well, there’s a lot going on with migration. Absolutely. It’s huge at the moment, but it’s come out of a period where migration was heavily negative when international borders were closed through the pandemic. So there’s definitely some catch up. playing up here, playing out here. What’s really driving the migration at the moment, 90 percent of net overseas migration is temporary migrants.

They’re generally students, particularly overseas students at universities and so forth. It’s probably one of the reasons why our rental markets are just so extraordinarily tight. Most of that migration. is going to be flowing into rental demand. And that’s probably the sticking point here is when we have a migration inflow, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of strategic thought about where are these people going to live?

How are we going to put a roof over their heads at a time when there’s no real supply response? We’re seeing the strongest rate of population growth since the 1950s. Two and a half percent nationally. So most of that’s being driven by net overseas migration. There’s a relatively small component which is permanent migration.

Permanent migration. Of course, the permanent migrants, they tend to rent first as well and then move gradually into more of a purchasing decision. Maybe that whole cycle is being fast tracked a little bit now because rental markets are just so tight and they can’t find rental accommodation or it’s too expensive or they want some more certainty.

So, it makes sense that they’re probably fast tracking a purchase decision, which is adding to housing demand or purchasing demand, but I think overall, this is a bit of a catch up phase even when you look at something like the population statement that comes out of the federal government, the clear plan is for population growth to start winding down from this year.

It probably, I think migration peaked in the March quarter of last year, fell through June, bounced back through September. That’s simply seasonal. You’ll start to see it winding down to more normal levels, partly because of just a tighter migration intake, but also there’s this initial phase of this re, re ignitement of migration where departures, haven’t really fallen too much at a time when arrivals have just surged.

And that’s just a timing thing. You’ll find that departures start to wind down. or increase, I should say once people have been here for say a year or a couple of university semesters and then they leave. So yeah, this is a temporary thing, but of course we need to get through it and we need to make sure that people have housing.

And that’s been the real hard part. There’s not much you can do in terms of getting a really rapid housing supply response into a marketplace, which it’s experiencing. population growth. It’s this high.

[00:14:38] Peter Fletcher: Yes. So you’d suspect that the whole COVID experience has kind of created some economic distortions in the marketplace that we’re sort of seeing a lingering impact on?

[00:14:50] Tim Lawless: Massive hangover. Absolutely. And you’d have to expect that with, you know, so much fiscal support and monetary policy support that came into our economy. There was always going to be a downside to that. And that’s what we’re working through at the moment. The fact that inflation is so high, that we’ve seen you know, household savings really accrued through through the pandemic.

They’re now being reduced. Drawn down quite rapidly now as households simply can’t save as much because of the cost of living, because of the high cost of debt as well.

[00:15:16] Peter Fletcher: Mm hmm. Yes. And there’d be a few people coming off that mortgage cliff, so called mortgage cliff.

[00:15:23] Tim Lawless: Well, that’s navigated, that’s been navigated pretty well.

It seems if you look at like mortgage areas, which are probably the best way to get an understanding of whether or not people coming off a fixed rate onto a variable rate are doing so adequately and being able to keep up with their

mortgage repayments, well, we have seen a rise in mortgage arrears, but from like 0.

2 to 0. 6 percent of 90 day arrears, which is still below pre pandemic levels. Yep. So it does look like most borrowers are weathering the storm, if you will, with interest rates, this new mantra of higher for longer. I think we’d be naïve to think that. Mortgage arrears aren’t going to rise further from here, especially as we see the economy slowing further, jobs markets to start to loosen up.

There are going to be more people that simply can’t keep up with their mortgage repayments unless interest rates start to come down. That’s the reality. I think you might, may even find that there’s going to be a pickup in people who are proactively offloading their property. Maybe because they know they’re not going to be able to keep up with their mortgage repayments or simply to de risk, to cash out of the market and take advantage of the windfall capital gains that we’ve seen accrue over the past four years.

[00:16:31] Peter Fletcher: Yeah, you’d suspect that there was some people that you know, coming into 2000, at the start of COVID where they went and bought some, a lot of money at very low interest rates expecting that on the back of the governor of the RBA saying that basically it’s never going to go up. I don’t think he said that, but yeah, there’ll be a lot of those sorts of people asking a few questions about their lifestyle right now.

[00:16:58] Tim Lawless: Yeah. I think the statement was not until 2024 at the earliest, like now, it’s now that we’re with a cash rate of 4. basis points of rises at a time where. We may not be, we’re expecting not to see rates rise up until this time. Keeping in mind those people that did borrow when interest rates were extraordinarily low.

Prudential standards in Australia are pretty strong and that’s probably why we haven’t seen mortgage arrears rise more than what they have. Mm hmm. APRA, of course, increased their serviceability buffer back in October of 2019 from two and a half percent to three percent. It doesn’t look like they’re going to be dropping that buffer back anytime soon, maybe when interest rates start to come down, but arguably not even then.

So I think with with that in mind, obviously we’ve seen mortgage rates rise more than three percentage points, which was the buffer. So that’s the danger zone. But yeah, I can’t see that buffer coming down anytime soon, which of course means if you’re getting a loan, you’re being tested to repay that mortgage now above 9 percent given most mortgages are above 6%.

[00:17:58] Peter Fletcher: Mm hmm. So, in terms of lending Tim, what I believe there was a pretty big spike in lending across all different categories. So first home buyers, upgraders, and investors. I understand the investors the growth rate of investor funding has continued to grow and grow and grow?

[00:18:22] Tim Lawless: It has, especially here in WA so the annual growth rate for investment lending in Western Australia is a bit over 60%.

It’s monumentally huge compared to other states. That’s the annual. That’s the annual change in the value of lending for investment purposes. That is stunningly huge. It’s huge. Yeah, absolutely. So investors at the moment comprise about 38 percent of mortgage demand in WA. That’s actually a little bit lower than New South Wales, believe it or not.

But it’s come from a pretty low base as well. Yeah. So, it is amongst the higher at the higher end for state level, you know, proportion of or share of investment lending. New South Wales being at about 43 percent of all lending to investors is really surprising when you consider it’s the sort of the city, I’ll talk about Sydney, the city with the lowest rental yields, the city with the highest buy in price.

If you want to buy a house in Sydney, you’re looking at say about 1. 4 million as a median. Typical dwellings a bit over a million dollars. And arguably not the best. Long term or medium term returns for capital growth given the affordability constraints that are marked already. I can understand it in WA.

This is the state or the city of Perth with the highest gross rental yields by far, excluding Darwin, which is higher arguably with the best prospects for capital gains given the tightness of supply, the strong population growth, the strong economy. At least over that time frame we talked about, 12 to say, 18 months or so there hasn’t And it’s also the state where affordability constraints are still pretty healthy, at least in relativity to other cities as well.

[00:19:58] Peter Fletcher: Mm hmm. So, this has been what I would, you know, Would call an investor led recovery. Would that be fair to say? In WA, I’m talking.

[00:20:10] Tim Lawless: Maybe not led. I think when you look at the numbers, investors definitely have been following the trend. Like, first home buyers have been surprisingly quite resilient as well.

And maybe that’s a symptom of just really tight rental markets giving, you know, Renters, a real incentive to become homebuyers if they have the financial ability to do so. I think any renter in the country is a little bit over the the tightness of rental markets and the fact that rents are rising so quickly.

And they’d probably feel like they don’t have a great deal of security on their rental tenure. And if they have to go back into looking for another rental property, it means joining the queues every weekend, probably offering more than what they’re That’s what the landlord is asking for just simply to secure something because rental markets, I mean, Perth is probably the best example here, a vacancy rate of about 0.6%. It is awful, Tim.

[00:21:00] Peter Fletcher: It’s really bad. It’s the worst that, you know, I’ve got a lot of agent friends and they’re just saying it’s awful. Just terrible. Like, if you’re a tenant, it’s terrible.

[00:21:10] Tim Lawless: Yeah. And think of the downside of, I mean, the social, the negative social outcomes to affordability and such a tight rental market is at the worst case, homelessness.

[00:21:20] Peter Fletcher: And we’ve got a lot of that here.

[00:21:21] Tim Lawless: Exactly. Rough living, couch surfing. And then at a lesser extent of that scale would be multi generational family, families and households becoming more common, group households, rebuilding and so forth as well.

[00:21:32] Peter Fletcher: Mm. Mm. And so as the market softens, like the and unemployment starts to increase when it eventually does, is that going to have an impact on rents and will that affect the demand for rent investment properties, do you think?

[00:21:52] Tim Lawless: Well, it probably will. And you’d have to think about rental affordability as very inelastic. So renters. Can’t go to the bank and borrow money to pay more rent. They’ve got a limit on how much they can possibly pay a week in their rental expenditures. So what happens when rental affordability becomes really challenging is renters start looking for more affordable options, units rather than houses maybe looking a bit further out from the city, regional markets, or they start rebuilding larger households, group households, multi generational households, that type of thing.

The reformation of households has been really slow, and this has been one of the really interesting I guess, patterns through the pandemic is that households broke up. They became much smaller. So pre pandemic typical household size is about 2.6 people. Now it’s about 2.5, even a little bit less than 2.5, depending on which measure you’re using. That doesn’t sound like a lot going from 2.6 people to 2.5 people per household, but it amplifies demand massively. It’s one of the reasons why rentals prices were going up so strongly at a time when international borders were closed.

It’s because all these group households broke up and became single persons or couples And everybody wanted space and that preference for space still seems to be a thing But of course space has a premium and not everyone can afford it

[00:23:13] Peter Fletcher: And i’m hearing stories of people Doing the exact opposite of that now is, you know, getting back, as you said, getting back together and, you know, starting to share and it’s quite uncommon quite common here in Perth to have, you know, five young blokes all sharing a four bedroom or three, four bedroom house and yeah, it’s a bit hectic in some houses.

[00:23:35] Tim Lawless: No doubt. Hopefully there’s a little bit of diversity there. It’s not all just four blokes and there’ll be a little bit

[00:23:40] Peter Fletcher: Who am I to judge? So, so prices have gone up by I think 63 percent since the trough of 2019. And at least here in Perth, much of that activity has skewed towards the sort of the more affordable end of the market and the, much of the growth, I should say, is skewed towards that lower end of the market.

What are your thoughts there?

[00:24:05] Tim Lawless: Yeah. What’s going on? It’s really interesting. When we look at our indices, that’s exactly what it’s showing, the lower quartile of the market. So your bottom 25 percent of the market has really led. the growth, not just recently through this entire cycle. If you go to a market like Sydney, it started off with the top end of the market, your expensive property, and then growth rippled out to the middle and then the lower end.

Perth seems to be driven by the more affordable end of the marketplace. So think about areas like Quenana or Rockingham, Gosnells, getting up to Wannaroo, those sort of markets, really leading the pace of growth. Part of that is probably the fact that investors are very active. So there does seem to be quite

a lot of interstate investors that are quite interested in those middle priced markets where rental demand is high.

Your buy in price is relatively affordable. Your yield is generally very strong. They’re competing with first home buyers who are quite often in the same sort of patch. The upper end of the marketplace, though, is really interesting, because it, obviously values are growing in markets like Cottesloe and Dolkeith and all those as well, just not quite as rapidly.

So maybe it just doesn’t have the same demand profile. coming into the marketplace. I imagine the supply side of things is equally as tight as any other market, if not more so, given the scarcity of those of properties in those sort of markets.

[00:25:25] Peter Fletcher: So for most agents, they would say, well, if you want capital growth, buy close to the city.

But this has kind of gone the other, in the other direction. Is it, is that? Is it sort of been driven by the sort of the investor activity, which is, as you say, competing against the first homebuyers? Is that what’s happened here? I think that’s a big part of it. And generally, I would agree, you know, buying within five or 10 kilometres of the CBD, you kind of protect that scarcity value of the land.

[00:25:53] Tim Lawless: It’s generally quite established. It’s harder to bring in a lot of new supply unless it’s in a big city. densifying marketplace. So generally that’s where you might describe your blue chip markets would be located and they have that scarcity value. But yeah, this latest pandemic cycle has been quite different.

And if you imagine how Perth’s urban form is panning out, which is very Los Angeles style, North and South, very linear rather than densifying, maybe that helps to explain it as well, that there is a lot of new development happening around those outer fringes that might be more attractive to investors and first time buyers.

[00:26:29] Peter Fletcher: Tim, I think that we’ve covered a fair bit of ground in this short period of time. What have I missed? Have I missed anything? I don’t think so,

[00:26:38] Tim Lawless: mate. We’ve covered a lot in this session. Yeah. And we’ve ranged from the resources sector, to infrastructure, to the economy, to prices.

[00:26:46] Peter Fletcher: Hmm. Yeah,

[00:26:47] Tim Lawless: I think.

[00:26:48] Peter Fletcher: Well, honestly, it’s been an absolute treat to have you on, Tim. The wealth of knowledge. I know that you’ve said in the past that you enjoy telling the Australian the story of what’s happening in the Perth, in the residential market. And you have your snout in the trough of the fire hydrant of CoreLogic and you know, what a privilege to have you on to to explain these things in detail to us.

So thanks so very much for being on. Absolute pleasure. Thanks mate. Yeah. And until next week, this has been Peter Fletcher for the WA Property Q& A Podcast. And that wraps up another episode of the WA Property Q& A. We hope you found our discussion valuable and gained some valuable insights into the world of property buying in Western Australia.

Remember, while we strive to provide useful information, it’s crucial to consult with the appropriate professionals before making any investment decisions. Don’t forget to tune in next week for another exciting episode where we continue to unravel the mysteries of the WA property market. If you have any questions or topic suggestions, feel free to reach out to us.

Until then, happy property hunting and remember to seek the right advice for your personal circumstances.

Thank you for listening.