The future of Australian property prices

[noirua]

Makes perfect sense.

Countries in Europe have so many immigrants piling in, particularly the UK, that their countries could be full of Prefab homes. They could line them up along the beeches so that immigrants could walk into them. If landlocked they could be put on the outer perimeters.

 

[wayneL]

Countries in Europe have so many immigrants piling in, particularly the UK, that their countries could be full of Prefab homes. They could line them up along the beeches so that immigrants could walk into them. If landlocked they could be put on the outer perimeters.

Machine gun nests lined along the beaches is a better idea IMO

 

[noirua]

Machine gun nests lined along the beaches is a better idea IMO

There is something in sinking boats as few would then attempt the crossing. A suggestion that less would then drown over time was deleted by Facebook so we have to be careful.
There are still what were called Pill Boxes or Machinegun Nests in place.


Hexagonal pillbox
Prime Minister Churchill was a qualified Bricklayer having learned the craft in his wilderness years. He built a wall at Chartwell, Westerham, Kent, England.

Charting Churchill: Garden Wall at Chartwell, Westerham

Garden Wall at Chartwell, Westerham 2014 © Leslie Hossack During the 1930s, Winston Churchill spent a great deal of time at his country home Chartwell where he wrote a number of articles and books.…

hautevitrine.com

 

[qldfrog]

My noosa hinterland farmlet settled yesterday.
I would put the amount we got at roughly 10% below the peak.. roughly 18 months ago.
Happy to be free to carry on living, disappointed with the price we got vs more mainstream suburban boxes.
There is a reason 90% of the population of this once great country are living in suburban hutches within 20km of the cbd, feeling isolated on a country the size of Europe

 

[divs4ever]

My noosa hinterland farmlet settled yesterday.
I would put the amount we got at roughly 10% below the peak.. roughly 18 months ago.
Happy to be free to carry on living, disappointed with the price we got vs more mainstream suburban boxes.
There is a reason 90% of the population of this once great country are living in suburban hutches within 20km of the cbd, feeling isolated on a country the size of Europe

nice to see the deal done , sad to see you didn't get a good price

are the millionaire believing the climate hype or just moving offshore , one would have thought they are still fleeing the cities

 

[qldfrog]

nice to see the deal done , sad to see you didn't get a good price

are the millionaire believing the climate hype or just moving offshore , one would have thought they are still fleeing the cities

but they do not want a farm, water and green grass, they want a white picket fence and a flat horse arena to build a steel and concrete modern bunker ;-)

 

[divs4ever]

but they do not want a farm, water and green grass, they want a white picket fence and a flat horse arena to build a steel and concrete modern bunker ;-)

well they should start digging and designing .. not sure i would doing that in the hinterland , maybe getting in 'tight ' with some of the neighbours would be better , could be a LOT of muscle up there

 

[wayneL]

but they do not want a farm, water and green grass, they want a white picket fence and a flat horse arena to build a steel and concrete modern bunker ;-)

Hmmm I might consider selling off the Ponderosa and see what we can get... It's just missing a concrete bunker... The diggs are a little bit more, <cough> "historical".

 

[sptrawler]

This is how stupid the ponzi scheme is, 5 years ago a young couple could buy a house in the outer suburbs of perth, no problems.
Now with the loonies over East buying sight unseen and paying over the odds, prices have gone stupid, hopefully we have a resources bust it usually brings about a property bust.
We need one IMO, all that is happening at the moment is property prices are destroying our social fabric, it's shocking.

The three Perth suburbs where house prices doubled in five years

In 2018 a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house near Rockingham would have set you back $250,000. Now … not so much.

www.watoday.com.au

House prices have doubled in three Perth suburbs over the past five years, according to Domain’s House Price Report released Thursday.

 

[farmerge]

This is how stupid the ponzi scheme is, 5 years ago a young couple could buy a house in the outer suburbs of perth, no problems.
Now with the loonies over East buying sight unseen and paying over the odds, prices have gone stupid, hopefully we have a resources bust it usually brings about a property bust.
We need one IMO, all that is happening at the moment is property prices are destroying our social fabric, it's shocking.

The three Perth suburbs where house prices doubled in five years

In 2018 a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house near Rockingham would have set you back $250,000. Now … not so much.

www.watoday.com.au

House prices have doubled in three Perth suburbs over the past five years, according to Domain’s House Price Report released Thursday.

@sptrawler I guess if one is a seller than the high housing prices are great.
Now if someone was to offer me a king's ransom for my place, no second thoughts would be needed.

 

[qldfrog]

This is how stupid the ponzi scheme is, 5 years ago a young couple could buy a house in the outer suburbs of perth, no problems.
Now with the loonies over East buying sight unseen and paying over the odds, prices have gone stupid, hopefully we have a resources bust it usually brings about a property bust.
We need one IMO, all that is happening at the moment is property prices are destroying our social fabric, it's shocking.

The three Perth suburbs where house prices doubled in five years

In 2018 a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house near Rockingham would have set you back $250,000. Now … not so much.

www.watoday.com.au

House prices have doubled in three Perth suburbs over the past five years, according to Domain’s House Price Report released Thursday.

If it was such a ponzi scheme, with 30 millions people on a continent, why isn't any block of dirt growing a brand new house?
Note a house in Toowoomba or Warwick is still priced well above a capital city suburban dwellings in most of the world
In 2024, for roughly $60k, you can buy a made in china container pack 2 bedrooms.
So if you can not buy a 100k 2 bedrooms place in the countryside, the reasons are much deeper than ponzi scheme.
It is a fundamentally broken system:
Regulations and overlapping layers of authority, red green tapes, overpaid workers/employees and parasitism from welfare to BS jobs and layers of incompetence as well as a debatable currency value.
If monetary mass doubles, so should Real estate.
Real estate situation is the canary in the mine, not a cause.
Killing or blaming the canary will not prevent the mine explosion, but could make some elected as MPs...

 

[JohnDe]

Bargain property prices in Victoria at the moment, cheaper than SA.

I reckon it says more about the Victorian economy than its property, the state is broke and people with money are not buying the rubbish new builds, or they are leaving the state.

Maybe a good time pick up a bargain in Victoria, I wouldn't but there are investors that are gamer than I.

When Adelaide (population 1.3 million) is dearer than Melbourne (population 5 million) the natural order of things has obviously been disturbed and there are opportunities for investors.​

Melbourne now officially the property market’s bargain basement

Talk about humiliation … Adelaide is set to pass by Melbourne in terms of the average property price later this month. It’s a new high for Adelaide, or a new low for Melbourne depending on which way you look at it.

Either way something unprecedented is happening in the Australian property market. When Adelaide (population 1.3 million) is dearer than Melbourne (population 5 million) the natural order of things has obviously been disturbed and there are opportunities for investors.

Back in March we asked “who killed the Melbourne market?” because at that time it looked like the state government in Victoria was hellbent on taxing the property market into submission. If that was the strategy, it has certainly hit its goal.

Melbourne prices have been falling all year, just as every other mainland state capital is rising.

As Eliza Owen of CoreLogic puts it: “We have not seen such a mixed picture in the Australian property market for many years.”

As it turned out, we got it only half right back in March with the suggestion that state land taxes had frozen the Victorian market.

Earlier this week, AMP released a new report on the national residential market and it concluded the key issue dictating property prices across Australia is supply. AMP economist Diana Mousina explained: “Fundamentally, Australia is not building enough homes to keep up demand, which is putting upward pressure on prices and rents.”

But it’s the flip side that we rarely see – and we are seeing it now in the city of Melbourne. The city has an oversupply, and an oversupply leads to downward pressure on prices.

Across Melbourne there are simply too many properties on the market to match demand – even demand fuelled by immigration. In fact there have been about 100,000 more homes built in Melbourne than Sydney in the last five years.

For owner-occupiers it means improved affordability. For existing investors it means you are at a disadvantage. However, for new investors it is a standout opportunity.

A new order?​

The reordering of the national market is happening against a backdrop of what looks to be another good year for national property investors.

In calendar 2023, prices lifted across the board by around 9 per cent while vacancy rates – at a rock bottom level of 1 per cent – meant rent rises were regularly in double digits.

Can those numbers be repeated in 2024? In the first six months of the year the national average price rose about 4 per cent and the monthly pulse is weakening. Most analysts expect prices will not quite match last year with an increase in house prices of perhaps 7 to 8 per cent for the year and rent increases of about 5 per cent.

The slowing tempo of the market comes down to three key factors:

• Firstly, the rate cut never came. And there needs to be a lot more evidence that it will come this calendar year. After all, we have only just eliminated the risk of a rate rise with this week’s better-than-expected consumer price inflation numbers.

• Second, the immigration boost that pushed prices higher and squeezed rental capacity last year is continuing but the pressure is easing as total immigration numbers begin to drop.

• Third, there is some evidence that the labour shortage of 2023 is also easing a little.

The other key point emerging once again is the outstanding merit of the standalone property.

Unit prices may well be bouncing in the short term as they play catch up with houses but the latest revelation from analysts is that bigger standalone houses with multiple bedrooms is the sector where rent growth is going to be best in the future.

As a CoreLogic report suggested this week: “There are stronger rental growth trends in larger dwellings, potentially reflecting the formation of share houses or multiple family households, with an 8.7 per cent rise in rent for houses with five bedrooms or more.”

In contrast the opposite is happening in apartments. There is a substantial slowdown in the rent growth of smaller dwellings, with annual growth in one-bedroom units and studios slowing from 16.8 per cent in the year to April 2023 to 7.1 per cent in the past 12 months.

The oversupply state
As we noted earlier, there has rarely been a time when the national average numbers were so misleading. Inside what seems like modest growth for the wider market, certain pockets are going backwards while other areas are shooting out the lights (such as Perth gaining two per cent a month).

In terms of prices the most intriguing is the relationship between three cities. Here’s the numbers: Sydney is in a league of its own with n average median dwelling value above $1.1m, and Brisbane is around $873,000. After that it looks like this: Melbourne $781,000 (and dropping), Adelaide $776,000 and Perth $773,000 (both rising).

This growing divergence between the performance of individual capital cities has consequences far beyond property prices.

For example, there has always been a stream of internal migration from Victoria to Queensland. It’s been easy to sell your house in Melbourne to buy a cheaper house in regional Queensland and have some money left over for retirement income.

But that strategy does not work any longer if Queensland prices are higher than Melbourne prices.

Likewise, the salary difference between cities have become a yawning gap. A young professional offered a new job in Sydney for an extra 10 per cent salary is not going to be fully compensated for the change – a two-bedroom with views in Melbourne will be exchanged for a bedsit at the back of a block in Sydney. Why would anyone move under these conditions unless they were guaranteed a better career path in the long term?

So, can the new national order remain in place? Most economists believe in a ‘reversion to the mean’ – a creed that says things will more or less come back to normal sooner or later.

Can Adelaide seriously outpace Melbourne in terms of property prices and capital growth? Logically, it is inconceivable.

Already there are questions over the Adelaide and Perth markets due to the relatively small volumes of sales recorded in those cities.

If you look at the numbers closely, the volume of property for sale in Melbourne is higher than average – conversely, there is less for sale than the average year in most of the other capitals.

Moreover, there is nothing on the immediate horizon that suggests things are going to turn overnight. CBA says “house price expectations contained within the Westpac/Melbourne Institute report shows price expectations have not seen any significant shift”.

Nerida Conisbee, chief economist at Ray White explained on a recent episode of the Money Puzzle podcast how the replacement cost of apartments in inner city Melbourne suburbs is now higher than the sale price of existing stock. This is a textbook example of when property is “cheap”.

The natural order will return – perhaps not in an identical fashion to the pre-Covid market, but something pretty similar. In the meantime, it looks like Melbourne is being offered at a discount.

 

[sptrawler]

Bargain property prices in Victoria at the moment, cheaper than SA.

I reckon it says more about the Victorian economy than its property, the state is broke and people with money are not buying the rubbish new builds, or they are leaving the state.

Maybe a good time pick up a bargain in Victoria, I wouldn't but there are investors that are gamer than I.

When Adelaide (population 1.3 million) is dearer than Melbourne (population 5 million) the natural order of things has obviously been disturbed and there are opportunities for investors.​

Like you say, Victoria is broke and the Govt can't get money off people who don't have any, so one would think property based taxation has to go up, there isn't a lot of industry left there and the electrical supply was sold years ago plus it is heading into shutdown mode.

So nah, I don't think Melbourne has seen the worst of it yet, the Andrews infrastructure binge has still to work its way through the system.

The Feds may help bail them out, but they have enough issues of their own, with the clean energy roll out, before the East Coast blackout.

Hopefully all's well that ends well, but I don't think we are at the end yet, I'm with you @JohnDe it needs someone gamer than me.

 

[sptrawler]

The issue I brought up a while back, where Eastern States buyers of W.A properties sight unseen, could end up in tears for them.

An article in today's local paper highlights the problem, W.A isn't like the East Coast, when we have a downturn property prices crash along with wages.

In 2007 a friend of mine sold an ocean front block just north of Mandurah for $1.2m, it still would struggle get that sort of money, 17 years later.

 

[mullokintyre]

Like you say, Victoria is broke and the Govt can't get money off people who don't have any, so one would think property based taxation has to go up, there isn't a lot of industry left there and the electrical supply was sold years ago plus it is heading into shutdown mode.

So nah, I don't think Melbourne has seen the worst of it yet, the Andrews infrastructure binge has still to work its way through the system.

The Feds may help bail them out, but they have enough issues of their own, with the clean energy roll out, before the East Coast blackout.

Hopefully all's well that ends well, but I don't think we are at the end yet, I'm with you @JohnDe it needs someone gamer than me.

Things are going to get a lot worse in Victoria.
As a resident it saddens me greatly, but economics and the realities of life will always trump ideology every time.
Already reeling from the criminal activities of the CFMEU and bikie gangs, beset with a weak political opposition, and every possibility that this years AFL grand final will be between two interstate teams, life could hardly get any worse.
With ever increasing debt, increases in taxes and state charges, Victoria has suffered an internal drain on the state for some years.
If it were not for the large influx of overseas migrants, the state would have a net population loss.
Residents are leaving the state.
Two recent events have made the state even less attractive for its residents.
Firstly, the Victorian Gas Planning Update highlights that there will be gas shortages from now on, and to stop the residents from revolting, it will be industry that has to do the rationing.
Some business will shift interstate or offshore if they can, others will seek backup systems if they can, others will find that the costs for any of the above are prohibitive and will simply close.
The second blow actually comes courtesy of the Federal Government.
The Albanese governments decision to limit the number of overseas training places starting from january 2025, coming on top of the 60k cut in overseas education visas last year will put a huge hole in the education industry in Melbourne's CBD.
It has been geared up around the industry, and there are large numbers of accomodation structures in place or being built that cater directly to student accomodation.
The Universities are crying foul, saying it will cost them billions, which s probably hyperbole, but the flow on effects will be significannt.
Mick

 

[JohnDe]

No signs that residential property prices are going to come down anytime soon, especially with all the governments throwing money like confetti to every infrastructure build they can think of.

“The big problem we have right now is that there is too much work underway for the workforce we’ve got. That is going to drive wages higher, and it has,” Mr Hanan said.​

​

The cost of building a new home has surged almost 40 per cent over the past four years, official figures show, partly due to a substantial pipeline of state government infrastructure projects increasing competition for construction materials and tradies.​

Rising costs hit Mirvac margins, new homes

Property developer Mirvac blamed the steep rise in labour and material costs for halving its profit margins on some residential projects, triggering a 13 per cent fall in operating earnings this year.

As Mirvac shares slumped 12 per cent in response to the news on Thursday, chief executive Campbell Hanan said too few workers were available to work on construction and that was a major contributor to cost increases.

“The big problem we have right now is that there is too much work underway for the workforce we’ve got. That is going to drive wages higher, and it has,” Mr Hanan said.

The cost of building a new home has surged almost 40 per cent over the past four years, official figures show, partly due to a substantial pipeline of state government infrastructure projects increasing competition for construction materials and tradies.

The Reserve Bank of Australia warned on Tuesday that a sharp rise in big-spending public sector budgets was exacerbating Australia’s inflation problem, and keeping interest rates higher for longer.

RBA governor Michele Bullock reiterated her view that she “doesn’t see interest rates coming down quickly”, and will not hesitate to raise them again, pushing back against market expectations for a pre-Christmas interest rate cut.

“I know this is not what people want to hear. But the alternative of persistently high inflation is worse. It hurts everyone,” Ms Bullock said on Thursday.

Bond markets shrugged off that warning, continuing to price a rate cut by December, while the Australian dollar ended 0.6 per cent higher at US65.6¢.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rejected claims government spending was prolonging inflation. That followed Treasurer Jim Chalmers disputing the central bank’s assessment that the economy was still operating at an unsustainable pace.

The RBA has cited a sharp rise in projected government spending as one of the reasons why inflation was no longer projected to return to the mid-point of its 2 to 3 per cent target band until December 2026.

Ms Bullock said governments were “doing what they can do” to balance their responsibilities to fight inflation and spend money on services, but doubled down on the RBA’s assessment that the economy was still too strong.

“The reason for [persistent inflation] is that demand for goods and services in the economy is still higher than the ability of the economy to supply those goods and services,” she said. “The board remains vigilant with respect to upside risks on inflation and will not hesitate to raise rates if it needs to.”

Although the markets are almost fully priced for a rate cut at the RBA’s December 9 to 10 board meeting, Ms Bullock said she did not expect to lower the cash rate this year.

“Given where inflation is, given employment is still growing quite well, given what we’re hearing from our liaison program about [the] tightness out there, we just can’t see what it is at the moment that’s going to allow us to lower interest rates,” she said at a lecture in her home town of Armidale in regional NSW.

Ms Bullock was captain and dux at her local high school and stayed in Armidale after her graduation to study economics at the University of New England.

Despite market expectations for cuts, the RBA board gave “serious consideration” to raising the cash rate to 4.6 per cent from 4.35 per cent this week because of concerns about “the degree of excess demand in the economy”.

The Reserve Bank now expects public demand to increase by 4.3 per cent in the year to December, far higher than its previous forecast in May of 1.5 per cent.

“The stronger outlook for public demand reflects ongoing spending and recent announcements by federal and state and territory governments,” the RBA said in its latest statement on monetary policy.

The result of the revisions was that economic growth looked like it would pick up over the next year, Ms Bullock said on Thursday.

“The effect of this is that the board’s expectations for when inflation will come back to target have been pushed out.”

The reason inflation was still “too high” was that the economy did not have the capacity to absorb current rates of spending, Ms Bullock said.

“A key point to make here is that demand recovered very strongly after the pandemic, to quite a high level. So even though demand growth has been fairly weak recently, this slowing has not been enough to restore balance in the economy.”

Dr Chalmers disagreed with the RBA’s assessment, contained in updated forecasts released on Tuesday, that the economy was still in decent shape and that government spending was prolonging inflation.


“I think it’s hard to sustain an argument that the economy is running too hot or that people have too much spare cash, given all of the data and all of the feedback that we get, which shows that’s not the case,” he said.

Inflation fight​

On Thursday, Mr Albanese repeated his claims that government subsidies were lowering inflation, even though RBA chief economist Sarah Hunter said on Wednesday that temporary energy rebates would not reduce underlying inflation.

“We’re making sure that they’re getting that cost-of-living relief, but we’re doing it in a way so it’s designed to put that downward pressure on inflation at the same time,” Mr Albanese said on Seven’s Sunrise.

Dr Hunter said state and federal government energy bill rebates were not helping the RBA to get inflation back to target sustainably, since the policies were temporary.

“So what the [RBA] board are considering and trying to achieve is inflation sustainably back at the target,” she said.

“But in terms of being a sustained return to target, that’s not something that we can see coming from those particular policies because they are only legislated for one year. By their nature, they are time-limited and temporary.”

Although the RBA expects the federal government’s $300 electricity bill rebate to temporarily push headline inflation down to 3 per cent by the end of the year, it forecasts the consumer price index to shoot higher to 3.7 per cent in December next year when the subsidies end.

Government energy rebates will not meaningfully affect trimmed mean inflation, the RBA’s preferred measure of underlying price pressures.

“The RBA sets monetary policy for the Australian economy as a whole, and we have only one tool – the interest rate – to achieve our objectives,” Ms Bullock said.

 

[Dona Ferentes]

this caught my eye. I've heard Victoria is a mess
.

Property

“Melbourne is still in the change room, whilst the other [cities] have already started running. It’s actually worse than that – most of the other runners have already finished a lap”
- Colin Kean, Director, Research4 [property research firm]​

 

[JohnDe]

Speaking to an acquaintance, let's call him Bob, Bob is building a multi-million-dollar block of town houses. He is hands on, with a real-estate license and several builds under his belt and has found the past few years has been the hardest in regard to getting quality work done in a reasonable time frame. The builder has their hands tied by the lack of tradespeople available, meaning that they can't sack anyone and get another in because there is no other.

On a Monday Bob went to see how progress was going and noticed the carpenters work quite fast and efficiently, he told them how impressed he was at their work and speed.

On Tuesday Bob dropped by to check on one of the other builds and noticed a lack of trades vehicles and found that here was not a single carpenter around. He called the builder and was told that he had no idea where they were, the carpenters should have been there until completion of their job, but he would find out. An hour later the build called and told Bob that the carpenters were all mates, and they had decided to take the week off to go surfing because the weather was so good.

Bob said, "sack them all". The builder said that he would love to but there is no one he can get to replace them.

 

[JohnDe]

An interesting article reminded me of my history, and also softened my old age affected thinking of emigration allowing me to remember my youthful side.

When I was a kid, my emigrant grandparents always said to me, "buy land John, it doesn't disappear like money". And my dad told me "No one's making more land.

I listened and as soon as I was old enough, I took up their advice.

“I came from Italy as a seven year old. We had nothing and I worked very hard, myself and my late wife, and I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved in this country,” he said.​

​

“The best investment, as far as I’m concerned, is real estate,”​

​

DiMauro said he dabbled in the sharemarket, but property’s the main game, and specifically shopping centres, which have benefited from decades of rising economic prosperity in Australia.​

The share market has also been good to me, but property has been better.

For 30 years I've listened to people telling anyone that will listen "the property bubble is about to burst", and that "property is too expensive, no one will be able to afford it and you will be left with a huge debt and no way of selling it".

One day they may be right, just like one day we will be living on Mars.

The article is also a reminder that good government and policy creates strong and stable economies, governments that look at strengthening wealth through hard work and reward. But that has been possible with the support of voters, my fear is that the majority of voters are now self-absorbed with a utopian dream.

Nick DiMauro’s rags-to-riches story and why he wants other migrants to be given a chance

Nick DiMauro has emerged as one of Australia’s richest property magnates. This is his rags-to-riches story and why he wants other migrants to be given a chance.

He’s the rich lister most people outside of property circles haven’t heard of, and that’s the way Adelaide’s Nick DiMauro likes it.

But having quietly amassed a $1.3bn fortune through investment in shopping centres and office buildings across Australia and New Zealand, the plumber-turned-property magnate has become one of Australia’s wealthiest real estate investors and a migrant success story.

After buying his first shopping centre in his home city of Adelaide in 1995, DiMauro has gone on to add 15 more to his portfolio – most recently in Tasmania where he spent $82.5m to acquire one of the state’s largest shopping centres, Channel Court on Hobart’s southern outskirts.

According to The Australian’s latest Richest 250 list, DiMauro now ranks as the third wealthiest South Australian, and comes in at 125 on the national list of Australia’s wealthiest people.

DiMauro puts his success down to years of hard work and a simple philosophy to investing in shopping centres; lock in the big-name anchor tenants and the rest will follow.

Three decades of economic growth in Australia, fuelled by waves of migration, strong relationships with major trading partners and political stability, have made the country a “beautiful place to invest”, according to DiMauro, who arrived in Australia from southern Italy as part of the post-war immigration drive.

And while many fear the impact of a new wave of migrants into the country, DiMauro welcomes it, saying the country will benefit from the ambition that many bring with them in search of a better life.

“I came from Italy as a seven year old. We had nothing and I worked very hard, myself and my late wife, and I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved in this country,” he said.

“You could never do that anywhere else in the world. You’re free here and it’s just a lovely country to do business in.

“I think immigration is good – I’m not worried about it in the slightest. I think the people that come over here are genuine people that want to do well here. And I think we have the opportunity in this country so why not? We were given the opportunity, why can’t we give them the opportunity?”

DiMauro and his family arrived in Adelaide from Vieste, a small town on the Adriatic coast of Puglia, in 1961.

A former telegram boy for the old Postmaster-General, DiMauro started out as a plumber before running a small suburban delicatessen in Adelaide in the early 1970s.

The venture was a success and DiMauro started buying residential blocks and small retail outlets before making his first major acquisition in 1995 with the purchase of Sefton Plaza shopping centre in Adelaide’s inner north.

Through the family’s Angaet Group, DiMauro and son Michael now oversee a portfolio of more than 20 shopping centres, office buildings and development sites across SA, Queensland, Western Australia, NSW and New Zealand.

DiMauro said he dabbled in the sharemarket, but property’s the main game, and specifically shopping centres, which have benefited from decades of rising economic prosperity in Australia.

The best investment, as far as I’m concerned, is real estate,” he said.

“We do our due diligence. Everyone does it a bit differently. I’m not too worried about small things. I’m more worried about the major covenants. All your big guys – Coles, Woolworths, Big W, Kmart, Target – have to have a good term lease, and make money, and if they make money that means people are coming into the centres and then everything else will fall into place.

“If you’ve got the fundamentals right, which is the big boys, then everything else will follow, and that’s been my approach all the way through.”

Shopping centres have emerged as the surprise packet of commercial real estate this year with several big malls changing hands as investors jump back into the market following the Covid-19 crisis which crunched values and rental levels.

Recent sales in DiMauro’s home city have included Westfield centres Tea Tree Plaza and Westfield West Lakes – the latter attracting a bid from DiMauro before he walked away from a potential deal.

Both 50 per cent stakes ended up going to a joint venture between Scentre Group and Barrenjoey.

While the cost of living has hit discretionary spending, DiMauro said his centres continued to trade well, and he continued to be on the lookout for more acquisitions.

“We haven’t really seen any major hardships that you read about; no more than normal,” he said.

“When times are tough retailers like Coles, Kmart and Big W – their turnover goes up which they have done – and our foodies have gone up something astronomically too.”

Upgrades are also in progress across several of DiMauro’s centres, including major upgrades at the Raintrees shopping centre in Cairns, at Armidale Plaza in NSW and at Logan City Centre south of Brisbane.

Outside of work, DiMauro describes himself as “a real boatie”, spending much of his time aboard his boats based at Outer Harbor in Adelaide’s west.

But the 70-year-old has no plans of slowing down, working closely with son Michael to oversee the family’s portfolio.

“I don’t know what else I would do,” he said.

“People say, ‘When are you going to retire?’. But retire from what? You can’t retire from life – you’ve got to keep going.

“I enjoy my work and I’ve got tremendous pride in what I’ve accomplished. It’s as simple as that really.”


Nick DiMauro pictured during his time working as a plumber.

 

[sptrawler]

How the gap between the property haves and have-nots just got wider

House sellers have been able to bank windfall gains, but everyone else risks being left behind as the property market soars out of reach.

www.smh.com.au

Property sellers’ profits have soared over the past decade, creating windfall gains for home owners who can use the proceeds to downsize, upsize, or help their family buy a home.

But the growth is widening the gap for home-buying hopefuls who do not have access to equity or parental help to get into the market themselves, with this societal division becoming a “critical” problem.

Peter Rae

Sydneysiders who sold a house in 2024 made a median profit of $655,000, Domain figures show, double the median profit of 2015 sellers at $326,250.

Melburnians made a median profit of almost $400,000 if they sold a house this year, a jump from $260,000 in 2015.

Brisbane’s profit this year of $395,000 is almost triple that the 2014 figure of $144,000, while Perth’s vendors’ bonanza was less, as a 2024 sale made them $231,000 as against 2015’s $165,000.