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Mainstream commentators this month described Sydney’s property market as having run out of puff despite and as predicted in CurtiseCall’s December 2010 market wrap, cuts in the official interest rate. This conclusion was based largely on so called “plunging” auction clearance rates recorded by Australian Property Monitors during the three Saturdays of this month before Christmas Eve with the following extracts from Dr. Andrew Wilson’s weekly article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 19 December 2011 being typical of such commentary:

• “…buying activity [was] in full retreat over the past month”…
• “…[with] the continued stagnant nature of the prestige property market…the market is being supported by significant numbers of first home home buyers”…
  

In the search for buying opportunities, Curtis Associates, buyers’ agents in Sydney, noticed a trend which began in October 2011 in the number of Sydney residential and commercial and retail properties being advertised for sale by mortgagees, receivers and managers. Such sales are collectively known as “forced sales” and the interesting trends identified during this month in which such sales spiked are the focus of this edition of CurtiseCall. 

Although auction clearance rates in the Sydney property market for October 2011 were broadly in line with previous months this year, there was an unmistakable sense around the auctions and in negotiations that buyers in the $1 million plus bracket were at last beginning to prevail over previously stubborn vendors now prepared to meet the market. 

It is often said in property circles that house prices in Australia double every seven to 10 years. Prompted in part by the fact that September 2011 marks the seventh anniversary of a relatively sharp downward correction in Sydney housing prices following a boom which peaked around 2003, we thought we would test that proposition by analysing all reported September 2011 sales over $1 million of Sydney houses or units purchased in the last 10 years to see what capital gains or losses were made by the vendors of those properties.

For those looking to buy a house in Sydney or an investment property in Sydney, the issue of CSG mining is a further and increasingly high profile example of the regulatory and environmental risks which can be encountered in the Sydney’s ever changing property market.

With a lot happening in the lead up to the imminent launch of the new Curtis Associates web site, this month’s CurtiseCall is a little shorter than usual.

The Sydney property market trends discussed in CurtiseCall June 2011 continued this month.

You did not have to look much further than the June 2011 Sydney real estate market for continuing evidence of a two speed economy right here in our back yard.

This was a month of conflicting economic data.

Towards the end of May 2011, the $2 million to $3 million bracket of the Sydney property market departed from the trends above $2 million discussed in CurtiseCall February 2011.This shift may signal an end to the confidence depleted mood which has in 2011 afflicted many real estate buyers as they responded to daily doses of...

In addition to being at the heart of the newly elected State Government’s election pledges to fix Sydney’s long standing public transportation problems, Sydney’s existing and proposed light rail systems are seen by some watchers of the Sydney property market as one of the biggest potential influences on the future direction of inner city residential and commercial property prices in the medium to longer term.

The Sydney property market this month was one interrupted by a change of State Government on 26 March 2011 and influenced by the natural disasters in Queensland and Japan. In a mood reminiscent of the uncertainty induced by the GFC, other buyers were spooked by the nuclear scare following the last of those disasters as well as the political upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East.

Despite the re - opening of the Sydney property market this year coinciding with tragic and de-stabilizing natural disasters in Queensland, Victoria and more recently, in New Zealand, some trends are already emerging...

In the last six weeks of the real estate calendar year and with the Federal election finally out of the way, the number of residential properties advertised for sale in the Sydney property market rose to levels unseen since the 2008 global financial crisis. That trend mirrored a sharp spike in the number of off and pre market properties offered to Curtis Associates over the same period especially over $2 million.

While auction clearance rates have definitely fallen this month relative to the levels experienced at the same time last year, the devil is in the detail underlying the published statistics. In an attempt to reconcile mainstream media reports which conflict with its day to day experience in the Sydney property market, Curtis Associates has analysed all reported sales transactions in the $1 million to $2 million bracket for October 2010 in the inner west and the eastern suburbs.

In a study much anticipated by some housing bubble doomsayers but which reinforces the views expressed in CurtiseCall August 2010, preliminary calculations just released by credit agency Fitch Ratings suggest that...

Talk this month of a softening in the Sydney residential property market belies what has been occurring in the auction rooms and elsewhere in the Sydney property market between $1 and $5 million. With spring in the air, continuing low interest rates and near full employment, buyers in that bracket have emerged from a hibernation prolonged by the hung national parliament and school holidays to notch up at least 220 reported sales throughout a large sample of representative suburbs in September 2010.

Driven by cold weather, a never ending Federal election and lingering uncertainty about the global economy, much of the Sydney residential property market has been in a holding pattern for the last six weeks. Media reports of rising auction clearance rates during that period masked a generally low underlying turnover. Even a swag of positive economic data, stable interest rates, the continuing minerals boom and a generally robust profit reporting season failed to entice buyers to take up an ever increasing supply of on and off market properties especially in the $2 million plus bracket.

Regular visitors may recall CurtiseCall - April 2010. As The Age reported today, in a paper reflecting his personal views rather than those of his boss, ASIC’s Chief Economist also thinks... 

As noted in the May 2010 edition of CurtiseCall, an autumn chill hit the Sydney residential property market which brought the pre Easter (2-5 April 2010) frenzy to a screeching halt. Has that chill turned to tundra or was it just the Sydney property market returning to more normal levels as the effects of historically very low interest rates began to wear off?

While prices in the 2010 Sydney residential property market have been defying gravity for months, there blows a cold autumn wind strongly suggesting this is about to change. CurtiseCall’s Sydney property market forecast for 2010 is that although the often quoted imbalance between supply and demand in Sydney’s property market is likely to prevent prices from crashing to the floor, the window has opened on opportunities for buyers who have been waiting for the vendors’ dream run to end.

The recurring themes over the last month or so concerning the Sydney property market have been high auction clearance rates especially during the “Super Saturday” preceding Easter Saturday, rising median prices, reserves being smashed, the continuing short supply of new and secondary stock, housing affordability and that old favourite, interest rates.

If one likens Sydney’s 2010 residential property market to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, then the accompanying image best illustrates what has been happening in many brackets since the last edition of CurtiseCall on 21 December 2009. Buoyed by the Reserve Bank of Australia’s surprise decision on 2 February 2010 not to increase the official cash rate, bobsleigh teams of investors, self managed superannuation funds and resilient first home buyers are driving up prices in the sub $1 million bracket of the Sydney property market. 

Welcome to our last CurtiseCall for 2009. Although hard to believe, another 12 months in Sydney’s property market is drawing to a close and compared to this time last year, what a year it has been!

This edition of CurtiseCall looks at trends over the past six weeks in the eastern and northern Sydney prestige property market. In the shoot out between east and north, it has been a tale of two cities with the lower north shore suburb of Mosman recording at least twenty-one sales above $2 million in the past six weeks which is more than triple the number of sales in the same bracket in its eastern suburbs rival, Woollahra.

In one of the first real tests of Sydney’s spring 2009 prestige residential property market, a crowd of onlookers last night was not enough to tease out any more than an $8 million bid... 

As one of the most hectic winter selling seasons in parts of the Sydney residential property market draws to a close, it is appropriate to reflect on the turbulent trends since the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers in an attempt to predict the likely trends in the Sydney property market leading up to the 2009 spring / summer selling seasons.

‘The Australian’ has just reported that the Australian Government had asked Treasury to model capital gains tax scenarios on family homes valued over $2 million. As this is political dynamite...

For a change, some of the market commentators such as RP Data/Rismark International are getting it right when reporting a jump in Sydney house property prices over the past few months. According to RP Data, there has been a 5.1% growth in Sydney house prices and a 5.4% growth in Sydney unit prices in the five months to May 2009. These macro based statistics with which Curtis Associates sometimes has a problem, disguise some of the activity occurring at the coalface since our last CurtiseCall on 15 May 2009.

After years of development, the launch of a new residential property derivatives market based on the RP Data – Rismark Indices is imminent. The ASX’s listed property investment contracts will allow investors to hedge their risk and invest on property price movements. It will give investors a low cost method of allocating capital to the residential property sector, and diversify their investment over major Australian cities.

We deferred this edition of CurtiseCall until after the 12 May 2009 Federal budget which announced the largest deficit in Australian history - $57.6 billion with net bebt forecast to peak at 13.8% of GDP in 2013 – 2014. The fiscal stimulus partly responsible for producing a deficit of that size will affect Australian property markets generally and the extension of the first home owners’ boost scheme by three months until 30 September 2009 will affect the lower end in particular.

Our regular readers might be interested to know that the 38 Victoria Street, Potts Point property we have been tracking since October 2008 just sold for...