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Agents who want to understand how their markets are likely to perform in the future have been advised to study employment statistics.
Simon Pressley, managing director of buyer’s agency Propertyology, said employment trends can be a precursor to property market trends.
“Wherever there is demand for a job there is demand for shelter. It is thereby logical to expect that wherever there is demand for more jobs in the future, there will be demand for more shelter,” he said.
Mr Pressley said looking at job statistics for individual cities and observing data trends over time can provide insights into the probable future performance of property markets.
There can often be a lag of 12 to 18 months before what’s occurring on the job front produces a material impact in real property data, he added.
Jobs data for Sydney and Melbourne illustrate why property markets in those cities have performed strongly in the past few years, according to Mr Pressley.
Australia increased its jobs total by three per cent between August 2013 and August 2015 – but Sydney had a 4.3 per cent rise and Melbourne had a 4.5 per cent rise.
Darwin, which has had a slumping property market, experienced an 8.3 per cent increase in jobs, but Mr Pressley said much of that growth occurred during the first year.
Propertyology’s research suggests that the trend could be reversed in the next year or so when construction on the Ichthys LNG project finishes, he added.
Hobart and Brisbane also added more jobs than the national average – 3.8 per cent and 3.7 per cent respectively.
The below-average capitals were Perth with 2.4 per cent, Adelaide with 0.8 per cent and Canberra with -2.2 per cent.
[Related: Sydney slump beckons as boom finally ends]
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