Terry’s View: Invest Wisely, Ignore Noise I feel for Australian consumers trying to make headway in real estate. The nation abounds with media misinformation on property and often the content consumers are seeing is underwhelmingly, and unnecessarily, discouraging.
A recent article that was widely published claimed it was almost impossible to find a home for less than $750,000 in any of our capital cities. Given that the median dwelling price in Australia (according to PropTrack) is $760,000, which means half of all sales are less than that figure, it was a patently false proposition.
Adelaide, Perth, Hobart and Darwin all have median prices well below $750,000 and both Brisbane and Melbourne are both around $790,000, which suggests lots of options under $750,000.
Another newspaper article recently inferred that you need to an annual income of $220,000 to afford a home in Australia. If that was accurate, a significant proportion of recent sales would not have been possible.
Media like this is all too common and it makes you wonder what motivates the people who write material that is so obviously false. Clearly the motivation is not to be helpful to consumers.
Rather, media delights in startling people and truth/accuracy/balance is optional. People trying to make sense of real estate markets across Australia are advised to tune out the white noise in real estate and access genuine research analysis.
