The Long Haul: Find your forever home

The concept of a ‘forever home’ has evolved. Whilst people may buy or build their dream home with plans to put down roots for the long term, historical data shows that most homeowners move on within seven or eight years. But there are indications that more and more of us are taking the long view.

Female Force

More women are finding roads into property ownership than ever before. The latest research has found a greater proportion of properties were solely owned by Australian women in January 2023 than in 20221.

It may be a slight increase – 26.6% to 26.8% – but it denotes an important shift. Property is becoming more accessible and affordable for women following changes in workplaces and government policies.

Perhaps the most significant change is in the nation’s gender pay gap, which when measured using the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) survey of average weekly earnings, has slowly narrowed from 18.7% in 2015 to 13% in August 20232. This has allowed women to earn and save more money to buy a property than in the past.

Various government initiatives have also helped women achieve property ownership in recent years. This includes the Family Home Guarantee, which allows single parent households, where women are overly represented, to access home loans with a deposit as low as 2%.

This rising buyer demographic is likely to result in changes across the property landscape. Everything from the design of new homes to the way real estate is marketed could soon be tweaked and refined to appeal more to women.

Remote Control : A Regional Renaissance

It’s one of the most fundamental shifts in the Australian psyche in recent history: city slickers who’d never seriously considered making the move to a regional area before suddenly had their eyes opened to the idea en masse.

Enticed by the promise of getting more bang for their buck and more flexible working arrangements introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, they exited the big smoke in droves. And they weren’t leaving behind things as top quality restaurants in the process — high-profile chefs are increasingly preferring to work close to where they source

their produce, and foodies are becoming spoiled for choice in places like Byron Bay, Orange, the Tweed and the Sunshine Coast.

Boarding Pass: The Migration Pathways

Australia is about to experience its biggest ever migration surge, with the Federal Government forecasting 1.5 million net overseas arrivals by 20271.

This equates to almost double the net number of migrants reaching our shores between 2017 and 2022, and is in stark contrast to the period over 2020 and 2021 when the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recorded more departures than arrivals in the wake of the COVID-19 border closures2.

The influx is welcome news for the business community which has been navigating staff shortages since the end of the lockdowns.