What’s ahead for our property markets for the rest of 2020 and into next year?

That’s a common question people are asking now that our real estate markets have been hit by the triple threat of:

• The Coronavirus Pandemic
• A recession
• Social and political unrest around the world

With a second wave of Coronavirus now upon us,  particularly in Melbourne, many are wondering if those dire predictions of 20-30% falls for our property markets that were made earlier in the year by those property pessimists are now going to come true.

The simple answer is NO –  our property markets are not going to crash – in fact they’ve remained remarkably resilient.

Sure there are problems in some of our rental markets and certain sectors of our real estate markets are suffering, but having invested in property for almost 20 years I’ve found that whenever there has been an economic threat, recession, interest rate spike, or credit squeeze, the residential markets always bounce back, usually more quickly than projected, demonstrating the resolve of the Australian community to maintain its embrace of real estate and homeownership.

Perspective is key through the COVID-19 crisis, and even though Victoria has been battling to contain a second wave of the virus, it seems to be winning the fight and we can’t lose sight of the fact that Australia still has some of the lowest rates of death and infection in the world.

Our economy is also proving more resilient than those of our peers, and, barring a significant deterioration, and has been well supported by the Governments, both federal and state. 

While there are still many challenges ahead for our economy and our property markets, there are also reasons to be optimistic about certain segments of the Australian property market, particularly in the long term.