August 10, 2024
Daily Telegraph, Sydney
By: Aidan Devine
Property investors have been served up a cheat sheet of where to put their money in the Sydney housing market before an anticipated cut in interest rates later this year. A Finder examination of every city market measured by its prospects for higher rental returns and capital growth showed most of the best suburbs for investors were in Sydney’s inner south. The worst markets – considered to be volatile with low prospects for capital growth – were concentrated in the Hawkesbury region, Central Coast and parts of the outer west. It comes as new lending data showed a dramatic shift in buying behaviour in recent months, with many would-be first-home buyers becoming investors instead. The Mozo analysis indicated first-home buyers opting for investment loans grew by a quarter since 2019. Terry Ryder, the director of research group Hotspotting, said Sydney’s housing market had flipped in recent months and the locations where investors could make money had changed. Until recently, many of Sydney’s fastest growing suburbs were affordable outer areas, but now it was units in pricier inner suburbs that could record growth, he said. “Outer-ring areas … have lost momentum and have significant numbers of suburbs classified as declining markets,” he said. Rich Harvey, the director of PropertyBuyer, said market expectations of an interest rate
cut in December or early next year were already spurring investors. “The savvy investors are trying to get in now,” he said.
