Hello and welcome to the Australians Money Puzzle podcast. Aunt James Kirkby the World, the editor at The Australian. Welcome aboard everybody. Happy New Year, everybody. I hope twenty twenty five will work out very well for you in your investing, in your endeavors. Will be here to hold your hand, will be here to help you in every way possible. And you can help yourself by writing into us and letting us know the issues that you want to hear and you want covered in the year ahead. It's always
good to hear from you for the moment. What we're going to do, of course, is our summer series and if you've been listening to the series, it's been terrific and terrific response, I have to say, considering the last majority of people are on holidays. But we had the fire episode FIORI financial independence Retire Early, Aer thed so on Christmas week and considering it was Christmas week, there
was quite a response. I know there would be because this is an issue which captures people's imaginations so much, this idea that you can achieve financial independence and retire early. We had a very good session with Lionel Lee. I find every time we mentioned it, there is always a chorus which suggests that we've forgotten to say this or we didn't mention that. And I'm very happy to return to the fire movement and the idea of financial independence
retiring early in the weeks ahead. What I tried to do with this series was give you a runway, if you like, for the year ahead. So we had the first part of the series, which was on share markets, individual share markets and nasdakaraix, whatever you've got, and what the consensus outlook was for those markets. Very good session with Mark Jokun again of Beta Shares. You can hear
all these if you've missed them. The second part of that series then it was zoning, you know, on individual stuff on the ASX and what was the outlook for the different sectors and the different stocks, big stocks that we all know and small caps that we all know. That was with June Belieu of the ten Capital Group. If you put all these episodes together, then you really have a package. I think that will give you a
great start of the year. What we needed to do next, of course, was property and who should be in the hot seat. Do you think for the property session. Well, I thought it was hard to beat. Stuart Wems of the pro Solution Group and the Investorly podcast. Happy New Year, Stuart, How are you happy?
Ne James, and happy to you to all our listeners, and thanks very much for having me back.
You're welcome. It's that time of the year where there is a lot of in the nature of media, certainly there's a lot of you know, what you might call wraps and lists what happened in twenty twenty four, what will happen in twenty twenty five, And it's natural enough that people want to know the market moving pretty much instantly, the share market obviously quite lively already, the outlook for rates and moving around quite a basic, the looming arrival
of Trump, that is, the inaugurated Trump coming down the line, and all sorts of effects for markets. But in property, one of the things that really struck me. I think over the holiday where I I'm the sort of person that I imagine some of our listeners are like this too. I do like to look at property, you know, I'm a spare time and we were actually looking, not that there was much for sale, unfortunately, in that time of the year that I like to look, or I have
some time to look. But it did strike me that we must never forget as property commentators, you and I and everybody else on this show, that property is still such a local issue. And we talk all the time about the averages and what's happenings us here in terms of macro or even averages for a city. And then you know, for all the social media and for all the technology, at the end of the day, you must get out of the car I reckon, and you must
go and look at that property. And you get out of the car and you immediately have a curbside assessment which tells you, oh gee, you know that looks so good on the internet. And this isn't going to work. I know before I even leave the car, this isn't going to work. The issues that our listeners face when they buy a property. You know, there's the block. It's a bad block, but it's a great apartment, except the fact that it backs out to a car yard. Whatever.
The point I'm making is that it's very local, isn't it. At the end of the day, it's almost become a cliche, but it's so true.
Well, there's no better evidence.
If you can pay the Perth market to the Melbourne market. We have the same interest rate settings. We have broadly the same you know, federal economy or national economy. I should say a lot of the settings are the same that economists would point to that we should be looking at, or be telling us we should be looking at to
work out how property is going to behave. But supply and demand, employment, interest rates, you know, these sorts of things are generally the things that economists tell us that will dictate property prices. But here we are Melbourne's off three percent and per s got double digit growth. So same settings, but it shows where sentiment and where market
cycles have a really big influence on these things. In the longer run, of course, interest rate settings will play out, but in the shorter term, I think it's really about sentiment and market cycles and.
Their property the particular property. I can go over to Perth hot market and I can buy a crap piece of real estate wouldn't be hard yep. And I can go to Melbourne in a poor market, a soft market, nothing going right, and I can probably buy an excellent property. Because it's all in the end, it comes down to this high It's not like buying an etf It's highly individual, isn't it each time?
It's one of the attractions to property, right, is that I've got control over asset selection. You know, I can decide where to invest. I can then control that asset in terms of improving it or how I'm going to use that asset. It's one of the things I think control is one of the main things that attract investors. But you're right, James. I mean, you look at the meaning house price in Melbourne. Core Logic says it's off
three percent. But I know some sales last year of really good a grade property that have actually exceeded the vendors' expectations when they went to sell it. Now, the thing is, a lot of a grade property doesn't trade when the market is soft. So that kind of skews the data as well, because a lot of vendors are discretionary, right, So why would you if you had a fantastic property, why would you sell it in a soft market if you didn't have to? And so a lot of a
grade property doesn't trade. But when it does trade, and you see in these slower markets, it really shows that quality performs completely differently. And that's the key thing that listeners need to think about. Obsess about quality when you buy a property. After you've bought that property, then obsess about the cash flow of that property. Yes, because you
can't change the quality. Really, you can't change the quality in terms of location, land size, these sorts of things after you've bought it.
That's right, This is what I was alluding to there. You know, might have been so individual. So you drive your minds across the city and you look at an apartment which looks so good. Then you realize the block is not well kept and the block is never going to improve. You can do what you like inside that apartment, but that block isn't going to come right. So this is the great power of a house, obviously a standalone property to those who can afford it that you can
do that. You can make it better, and you can make any property better, but some have more scope than others. One of the things just before we get to the issue at hand, which is what's going to happen in the year ahead, mentioned Victoria there. Well, I did something in the Australia yesterday and it was about Victorian state taxes because do you know there are ten ten separate
state taxes for properly, two of which are new. And this is in a city where the market was the weakest in the entire country last year, and it's heading the same way this year and this morning so far. That is, there are six hundred and thirty six comments on that piece, which would suggest to me that it hit a nerve. And I'm often reluctant to write on a region inside a national newspaper because I always have that feitling, Oh, you know, the person in Queensland isn't
going to be interested. But actually everyone was interested because I think they're worried. They see what's happening in that state as what could be a prototype for every state, and that's not what people want to see. This will come up in the show, folks. We will now deliver on promise to tell you about the year ahead. Because Stewart has been studying this all through his holidays. He's been getting ready for this show. He's got a lot
to tell you. So let's start with the obvious question, what are the key factors specifically and exclusively about twenty twenty five that property investors should know.
Sentiment will outweigh I think most fundamental factors, James, and it sort of goes to your point about the taxation in Victoria, particularly around taxation around property in Victoria. And we might on the face of it look at that and go, well, that's a big negative. That's a detractor, and it really is. But at the end of the day, investor sentiment will outweigh that. So if investor sentiment decides, okay, we think there's a lot of value in Melbourne despite
the taxes, investors will look through it. I mean, if you're an investor, a property investor, the tax system is going to change. You might hold a property for thirty years. There's going to be a lot of changes you need to navigate over that period of time. And if you look back over the last forty years in Australia, there's been heaps of changes, Kaprigain's tax introduced to GST negative gearing with quarantine for a short period of time, but
the property market has navigated that. I find the best sort of proxy for sentiment around a particular location is interstate migration. It gives us a sense of, you know, how Australians are really thinking about a particular location, and it's interesting to note that interstate migration is fifty percent higher than the long term trend in New South Wales.
When you say it's higher, what's higher, people living, people leaving, people leaving the Southwest because it's so expensive, possibly.
Probably and probably because of interest rates. So New South Wales normally loses about five thousand people per quarter. It's averaging about seven thousand, seven hundred over the last twelve months. When you look at Queensland, Queensland normally gets about six thousand people per quarter. It's invited seven half thousand people on average per quarter over the last twelve months. So Queensland's benefit. South Australia normally has a negative interstate migration.
It's still negative, but to a lower extent. That's no surprise given how that market's been doing, and Western Australia's turned around but off a very low base. I think the interesting one though, is Victoria. Victoria was well documented was losing about five thousand people per quarter through that COVID period twenty twenty to twenty twenty three. It's now
turned positive. The number doesn't really matter so much. You know, you can say, oh, Stuart, six hundred and sixty people per quarter, came to Victoria, net Okay, we've got two and a half people per house, so these are that new dwellings. We need to accommodate those people. That's not really the point. The point is that quite often a change in interstate migration predates a change in property price movement,
which I've studied previously. So if you look at Queensland, it was negative interstate migration for a long period of time. That switched around in twenty eighteen and that's when prices started to sort of take off. So I think probably the interesting thing here is Sydney's above average losing more people than normal.
That's kind of interesting.
Maybe that tells us maybe the Sydney market is losing a bit of steam, and that might tell us what happens in twenty twenty five. But the most interesting observation obviously is those states that have outperformed Queensland, South Australi and Western Australia are still enjoying strong popularity. And the key one though, I think, is the change in Victoria.
Are they buying homes? This isn't investor action really is that these are people buying their homes.
These are own occupiers, but It's sort of reflects in loan volumes as well, So you can look at investor loan volumes and it's the theme is sort of the same. But what I'm really looking at is sentiment. How are people thinking about a particular location for a long time. You think ten years back, are in fifteen years back? Queensland was had political problems, had a lot of floods. You know, they had a lot of challenges. No one wanted to go to Queensland anymore. Now that's changed. They
haven't had those disasters for a while. They've got the Olympics coming up. You know, it's all really positive. Sentiment in the shorter term will drive markets, and we'll drive markets beyond some of the fundamentals things like increase taxes and so forth. And if we're thinking about what will happen in twenty twenty five, sentiment is one of the big things we need to really think about.
Okay, that's interesting, so folks, in terms of factors this year on property investment and even home buying, there is that issue of internal migration trends, and then exists interesting out of Sydney into Queensland. The course which is so well established, but Curiously, did you say that there is actually an optic in internal migration to Victoria?
Correct?
Normally, long term trend is Victoria loses one thousand people per quarter. Over the last twelve months it's been positive six hundred and sixty, so percentage wise, it's a pretty big turnaround. I'm not too worried about the actual number, but it's more the theme of the number. Yes, gives us some sense of how people are thinking. Victoria has the highest population growth, so obviously interstate migration is only one element. Victoria's population growth over the twelve months is
two point four percent. The only state that has a higher population growth is Western Australia at two point eight percent, and that's pretty important. Obviously, population growth drives housing demand, so you know, whilst there's a lot of negativity around Victoria, the numbers show us that maybe sentiments changing and certainly the population growth.
Is strong and it certainly isn't keeping people away, that's right,
though it might appear to do so. Just to pick up on your line of thinking, like why would you go to a state where they have ten different property taxes And the simple answer is because it's cheaper and it's so much cheaper, as you're saying that the investor will see through the taxes which are a flexible cost if you like, and that can change, and government's changed in their train of things just to cover off on the other big factor always the swing factory, if you like.
In property. Everyone says to me, well, when they cut rates, property will come alive. I wonder about that. I wonder, a will they cut rates if they deal with they cut them like anything we're expecting, and I wonder will it really charge and stimulated market where there is something of a drift going on. We saw pretty ordinary market last year, like five percent national average lift, one city
falling behind Melbourne down three. Canberra also actually off just a little bit over the year, and Sydney kind of drifting as well, going nowhere towards the end of the year. Terrific performance of course over in Perth. Amazing factor about that you mentioned at the very beginning of the show.
And it's so true that you have one city where prices are falling, in one city where prices are rising Melbourne and Perth, and in another jurisdiction or whatever, you might have two different central banks and one would say things are heating up too much. They need a rate lift over in Perth and they need rec decrease and can't do that. If you're the RBA, You've got to set it for the whole country. It's one of those curiosities we find ourselves with. But tell me about reates.
What are you, as a property professional of what are you assuming? Are you assuming a cut? And when would it be and for how much?
Sure? I have no idea.
James, no idea? Oh, fair enough, honest answer.
I think the monthly inflation data was rees yesterday. I think the market's getting a bit excited about talking about it.
February.
I thought they were getting excited in the absence of anything else. I mean, really, am I supposed to change my view on rates because of one inflation print? You know?
Yeah, let's reframe the question, if I may. Let's think about if we do get an interest rate cunt, how will it affect the property market? And the answer to my mind is in loan volumes, right, That's what we need to be studying. Because more money flowing into the market, of course, PUSH's price is higher. There's a very close correlation with loan volumes and property price movements.
And so that's what I really look at.
So if interest rates come down by three quarters of a percent, which is what the kind of market's pricing in this calendar year, by my calculation, to increase someone's borrowing capacity by about five to ten percent, so it's okay. And it might be like, might push someone from not being able to buy property to being able to buy property. So it could be a really big decider, but it's not massive. Right of course, people that have already have a lot of mortgages, a small interest rate can't helps
their cash flow significantly. So certainly someone that is on the journey of building a property portfolio might be in a better position or might feel more comfortable after a little bit of a rate cut to buy again or invest again. But loan volumes are already relatively high, James, when you look at the actual numbers, it's almost back to the peak that hit in late twenty twenty two. So can loan volumes go higher? The interesting thing, James, and I haven't mentioned this to you that a lot
of the banks have been covertly changing credit policy. They've been telling us we require less documentation here, We're going to be a little bit more flexible for an interest only rollover term. Here, they're just small changes at the fringe, but we haven't seen them. We only started to see them in the last quarter of last year. So I think the banks will want to keep that credit growth going. And obviously APRA said no, we're not changing the three
percent loan buffer, so that's in place. So I think the bank's response then will better change their own credit policy to sort of loosen off credit a little bit. So if that happens at the same time as interest rates reducing, I think that will stimulate loan volume and it will probably have a positive impact on the market. But maybe to a lesser extent, maybe people will say, well, persorly taken off, Melbourne looks really cheap. Now I've got a little bit more money I can borrow. I can
now buy a house in Melbourne. Let's go and do that. And so I think the relaxation of interest rates and perhaps credit policy might serve Melbourne better than some of those hotter markets.
Interesting hope that thought. Folks can take a short break. We'll be back in a moment. Hello, and welcome back to the Australian's Money Puzzle. I'm James Kirby and talking to Stuart Weams. Now we had a look at some of the issues as an investor you should be aware of. I'm assuming to some extent you're across the basics, and I'm sure you are. About the property market. Okay, it was an okay year last year. We did four point nine percent on average across the country and in a
way that tells you very little. Because Melbourne fell over the year, Perth went through the roof over the year, so it was one of those years where there really was major dislocation across the performances of the different cities. One of the things that happened all year was this sort of expectation that rates would fall. The fact is they didn't fall. They didn't move for the entire year.
We are now told by the powers that be economists and various professional forecasters that rates will come down in this year twenty twenty five mid year perhaps, Okay, there's some variation around that, but there's a broad consensus they'll fall. I think Stuart, you were thinking something in the orders of just three quarters of eight percent over the whole yeara which, as you say, we'll move the dial. But
it won't exactly flip things on their head. So all we might do in this segment is just take a look at what is expected now specifically in the market this year, and what you think of that and why people might have come to these conclusions. So, first of all is Sydney, and I think the base case there is that Sydney will continue to drift and fall. Maybe one to five percent is what I can see. What do you think of that?
The interstate migration indicators sort of concerns me a little bit. Speaking to bias agents in Sydney last year, they said that it's a very interesting market's almost perfectly balanced in terms of the supply from both demand from buyers and supply from sellers. The buyers Agehn speaking to had been operating that market for twenty years, hadn't seen that sort of perfectly balanced market, which means that only a little bit needs to go wrong to sort of put it
off kilter a little bit. I don't think we'll see much of anything really from Sydney, So somewhere negative three to positive three in terms of a range a three percent changing property process. Let's not get excited that the share market can drop three percent in a day. Yeah, pretty much nothing, I think, is the answer. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in that range.
Okay, So sort of a balanced market between buyers and sellers in Sydney. I would never underestimate the capacity of Sydney to bounce, never under resumeate that market. It's a great market for investors, certainly tough to be at home buyer, and of course always has been and always will be. All right, and then Melbourne, I see that again, something similar, right, minus one to minus five percent, they're saying from Melbourne, it's already done minus three. You did your own numbers
on Melbourne. What was your contention about the Melbourne over the decade.
Well, over the last eight years, James nice eight years.
Yeah, Yeah, Melbourne's median house price has dropped net of inflation, so on real terms two point four percent over that period of time, over eight years compounding. Yeah, their only worst market was in Sydney between nineteen eighty nine and nineteen ninety six. Again another eight year period where it dropped two point eight percent. So we're almost making history not for good in Melbourne in terms of where the
price drops are. I also studied the flat cycles. So property tends to move in either a growth cycle followed by a flat cycle, and so on and so forth. Yes, and that's quite distinct, you can pick that up. And so I studied all flat cycles, all flat cycles since
nineteen eighty in those core markets. They tend to if you look at the average or the median, about eight eight and a half years, a flat cycle will last for and over that time, in real terms, net of inflation, a one percent per annum drop in prices over that period of time, So in real terms, your house is falling in value. And the longest flat cycle was in Perth,
the most recent flat cycle that lasted twelve years. So it's possible Melbourne continues on that trajectory, but it's already had quite a significant fall in prices net of inflation. It wouldn't surprise me if we started to see small positive increases in Melbourne to kind of level that.
Out, crucially because the last AHOs were so bad.
Yes, correct, yep, exactly right.
You know, sentiment will change first and then prices will follow, and typically the market will want to see some price action and then most of the people then decide to jump aboard, right, most people are too late to the party in terms of investing. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see some positive price growth.
In Melbourne this year.
I don't think it's going to be huge, but I think we're getting closer and closer to the beginning of a new growth cycle. And if I put a circle around it, I would say within the next two years, I think Melbourne will enter into a growth cycle.
There are long periods, aren't they, These cycles, your flat periods of growth period you're saying eight years, eight years. This is why say they always say pulled on for at least ten so that whatever happens you get two growth hears. Yeah.
Well, if you're unlucky to mess the timing up and by just before a flat cycle, you actually got to hold onto that property for maybe twenty years.
You really need as many.
Growth cycle as you do flat cycles. And that's why it's important to really think about where markets are in those cycles. If you'll oblige a little bit, James, I'll talk about the growth cycles because I study them as well. Of course, the average or median time is banging on ten years for growth cycles since nineteen eighty. Over that time, prices increased by two hundred percent, So that means the
meeting house price triples over that ten year period. And so if you have a look at Adelaide and Perth, they're five and a half years into their cycle and we've seen seventy percent increase in prices in Adelaide and Brisbane, you'd say that maybe they're past a halfway point, but they still go a little bit to go. Yeah, Perth is only two years into it and we've seen a forty percent increase, So.
You would say there's plenty left. History would suggest because they had such adult I mean, nothing happened there for a decade, right.
Twelve years.
They had in real terms a one percent perannum compounding drop over that twelve year period. Yeah, there's a lot of ground to make up there.
Yes, it swings roundabouts, folks, and it's really worth keeping this in mind. I'll ask your question, what is the minimum period of time on average you believe an investors should get engaged with any property for.
As in the holding period. Yeah, for as long as you possibly can. But I think if your time horizon is less than ten years, it's going to be a risky proposition unless you're buying something that you can manufacture some equity, So you're buying something you think you can complete a substantial renovation that's going to substantially change the
value of the asset. But for a passive investing, you know, if you hold a property for thirty years, you'll get maybe about ten percent of the gains in the first ten You've got about thirty percent of the gains in the second ten year period, but most of your gains will come in that last ten year period over that thirty years. So the longer you hold it, the better
off you are. But it's substantially better off, right, And that's why asset selection, which we spoke about at the beginning, James, buying the right property is so important because if we're going to hang on to it, hopefully for twenty or thirty years, that decision that we made twenty or thirty years ago is going to have a big impact on how our property is performing in that at that time.
That's the up film. Is there a minimum where you say, I really don't think people can make money on a property how passively in a period of less than.
X eight to ten years, probably more ten because you just don't know how markets behave You could have a GFC event or something like this.
You can't really control returns.
Yeah, I guess if I was investing in Melbourne, for example, where I think I've got a strong view that it's about to enter into a growth cycle, you might go to the lower end of that band, so eight years. But if I was going to go into something like Brisbane that's already sort of through a gross I'd want ten plus years just to make sure I can hold it long enough to enjoy that growth.
It's interesting, isn't it. I hope this is useful to the listeners, and it's so counter to you know, we love to write about this the property that someone bought, you know, and two years later flipped, But you know the number suggest actually most of the time, for most people, that is not how it works, and it can go very, very wrong if your flip doesn't work. Basically, you could spend the rest of your life trying to sort it out.
And I have met people who are basically a certain property proposal or prospect or development which did not work out for them really sort of skewed, you know, half their investing life. And we don't pay attention to that so often, but on this show we do because we want to look after you. Okay, we'll take short break back in a moment. Hello, Welcome back to the Australians Money Puzzle podcast. I'm James kirkby Well, the editor at The Australian, talking to Stuart Weens of pro Solution and
the Investoperly podcast. We're talking about property in the year ahead. This is part of our summer series. I hope you're enjoying it. I'm going to now throw the curly one.
Everyone likes to think we can have something to hang on to at the start of the year, that there are these forecasts that we can sort of live by, that the share markets will go up by seven to ten percent or something like that, and the property will grow up or won't go up or on average this capital city average forecast properly, by the way, for the entire nation of Australia urban settings dwellings twenty twenty five, if you want to hear it is somewhere between plus
one and plus four percent, which is all very good and very comforting, but actually the truth is, no one has a clue what's going to happen. A clue on Earth in certainly in the space of the year they don't. So what could throw these assumptions out the windows? Tore in twenty twenty five.
So quite often people's site global instability, you know, a war, Trump upsetting someone, and I think that's going to happen, which will upset stock markets of course typically, and actually that pushes more people away from the stock market into the property market. So I've found over last twenty plus years that a global event like that actually makes people think, say, that's why I should have bought property, because it's a
real asset. I can see it. It's not going to change in value, So I don't think I'm not too concerned about something like that. Our biggest risk is James. There are markets around Australia where there's a lot of people that hold property that would love to sell but don't want to give it away. They realize it's a soft market, particularly in Victoria. They're paying these extra taxes and they would like to change their mind, particularly around
coastal locations, but I think it's everywhere. The only reason we haven't seen prices crash in Melbourne and Victoria is because people have been in a financial situation where they haven't had to sell, they can make the decision. Now if that was to change. So if we saw a substantial rise in the unemployment and financial distress, then those people will be put in a position where they have to sell. Prices will fall significantly in that scenario.
I think.
Now I'm not anticipating it, but if you have a look at Victoria feet for instance, over the last ten years, Victorian's tax revenue is increased by ten billion dollars a year. Victoria's wage bill, a public service wage bill, has also by ten billion dollars a year. Right, so all those taxes are going into this bloated workforce. My concern, then, all the risk is that there's a change of government
in Victoria. They say let's reduce the workforce, this public service workforce, because that's the easiest way then to give some tax relief, and then all of a sudden, unemployment rises in Victoria. There's a lot of discretionary vendors out there that would like to sell their property. Now they have to sell their property and prices drop.
So ironically, in trying to reform the taxes they could spark that's interesting. It suggests a kind of catch twenty two then, doesn't it? Really?
It is.
I think the underlying economy is pretty strong. I think the labor market is strong. I don't think that a government's going to make substantial changes like that. You've got to sort of grow the economic pie and then re home those employees back in the private sector. So I
don't anticipate. I don't think it will. But that's the one thing that's kind of saved the property market is the health of the employment market and the strength of household budgets in terms of being able to afford these houses. But if that was to change, then the higher taxes on property will have an impact because people will be forced to sell in that scenario.
What about if the redcut never came to pass, And that's not inconceivable at all. The thing is that the beforecasters make their forecasts, as I always say that the secret to making this for lutcras forecast is not a smile. So they stand there and they say, we think, and they're frown what they're doing that. You know, whatever rates
will be X and Y, no one knows. So let's say in a very natural way that in twenty twenty five they just kept pushing the data of the forecasters red cut further out, and it never came to pass, so rates remained where they are. What would that do well?
I expect rad cuts will have a slightly positive impact on the property market, James, because lending volumes are already high.
So the reverse is true too.
If we don't see a rate cut, I think it will have a slightly negative impact, but but I don't think it will be substantial. You know, people are making decisions already. We've got to understand where we came from was not sustainable. You know, interstrates of two percent was ridiculous. Where we are today is only slightly above kind of long term average. This is kind of normal in terms of interest rates. Is so if interestrates were to hold out,
that's fine, and I think households can afford it. It's showing that the areas rates have ticked up a little bit, but they're not material as long as the health of borrowers maintain, I don't think it's going to have an impact on property prices.
So in conclusion, it seems you are carefully, conservatively mildly optimistic if it's see.
No, you're not wrong, it's not a very popular opinion.
But I think twenty twenty five will probably be a repeat of twenty twenty four in terms of those standout markets will continue. Maybe Melbourne will turn around. It wouldn't surprise me if we see some small growth in Melbourne, and it wouldn't surprise me. Actually what Sydney prices are up to and a half percent last year, It wouldn't surprise me actually if Sydney records a slight negative next
year as well. But I don't think, you know, we look at Melbourne, Sydney, I don't think any major changes in prices. But Perth I think will again be the standout market.
Very good. Whatever else. Investors do like some certainty to the extent that they can get certainty, and to the extent that it is normal. As you say, you know, rates aren't crazy. They're not fifteen percent. Neither are they zero or one percent. We're in a zone which is something close to historical norms, and on that basis a lot of what we regard as normal investment theory or approach or practice should work. And maybe, on that mildly positive note, we will let it rest for our listeners
to digest. Okay, hey, Thank you Stuart. Great to talk to you. We'll have you on again across during the You're lovely to have you on the Property Show today.
Thanks James better pleasure.
That was Stuart Beams. There, folks of with pro Solution Group and the Investoperly podcast regular on the show. Thanks for listening. Now, if you've listened to the share Markets feature, the Individual Shares and Property Show, we will now put those issues together and in the next show I'm going to look at the overall outlook for you and your
investment allocation. In twenty twenty five. We're going to look at some of the issues that we didn't pick up in the series so far, such as cash for instance, our view on that alternatives crypto, which we have to take seriously as an investment class. Whether you like it or not, it's there. The issue is what you do about it, and we will look right across all aspects of investments into your head. That's the next show with James Gerard. Until then, talk to you soon.