Cameron Kusher will be speaking at Prop20 in March and April. To register for this event visit proprea.com.au.
Cameron, what’s your area of speciality?
Residential property is more my speciality (than commercial or other forms of real estate), as is blending economic and demographic trends with what we see in our data, and more specifically on housing.
What topic(s) will you be speaking on at Prop20?
I’ll be exploring international markets and how they impact Australia. I’ll talk about some of the broader trends globally and I’ll definitely be discussing low interest rates and their impact on housing markets.
From a housing-specific perspective, we can’t really point to what’s happening in other markets as an indicator for us. But broadly, in terms of the housing market, what’s happening in the US, as the world’s biggest economy, does have an impact on the Australian economy.
What’s happening in China, which is Australia’s largest trade partner, has an impact on Australia as well, not necessarily from a specific housing perspective, but from a broader economic perspective.
What’s your prediction for the Australian real estate market in 2020?
I think we’re already starting to see property prices increasing again in Australia and I think we’ll see more of that as the year continues. Growth in property prices has been driven by the fact that not a lot of stock is being listed for sale.
The big question mark for us is, is that going to change? That could really change things because if there’s suddenly more stock to choose from, then we probably won’t see prices accelerate as quickly as they have been, purely because there’s a little bit more choice out there.
The market has been in a recovery phase for about nine months and you would think there’s probably enough evidence now that the market is growing and there are clearly buyers back in the market. You would think that that would give some sellers the confidence to come out of the woodwork and start listing their properties.
What impact, if any, do you see Australia’s bushfire crisis having on the residential real estate market?
That’s interesting because when you look at things like the Brisbane or Townsville floods, they do have an impact but people tend to have a short memory about that.
But I wonder with what we are seeing about climate change and with the bushfire disaster if people will start reconsidering tree change or sea change properties. Will people try to look for a different kind of tree change or sea change to what they have sought historically?
A lot of these sea change places are also surrounded by bush. So does that make more developed places like the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast or even Newcastle, more popular because you get to be by the coast but you’re not surrounded by bush so you don’t have that threat of bushfire?
