Stuart Zullo
Last year was the year of the first home buyers in Australia with more than 190,000 Australians taking advantage of government first home buyer grants and getting themselves into the real estate market.
Whilst it would seem that first home buyers dominated the market, this wasn’t exactly the case with 26 percent of buyers last year being first timers and the majority still being non-first home buyers.
First home buyers did however take up a greater portion of the real estate market than usual with a 55 percent increase in the number of first home buyers in 2009 compared to 2008 and according to reports 2009 had the highest level of first home buyer activity ever.
This was definitely witnessed here in our Casula real estate office as we had a lot of first home buyers coming through our doors wanting to get their first home before the federal government boosts ran out. In fact it was even found that Liverpool City had the highest rate of first home buyers in the state!
It’s probably fair to say that without last year’s bonus government grants for first home buyers, there would have been less activity from first home buyers… although last years very low interest rates may also have helped spur these buyers along.
Unfortunately with the federal government’s first home owner boost now gone and the New South Wales first home buyers supplement ending on June 30th we will no doubt be seeing less first home owner activity this year (don’t forget though that the $7000 FHOG will stay as well as the First Home Plus in NSW!).
But don’t worry as I have mentioned before, this year we might be seeing less first-home buyers but we will be seeing more investors in the market, so there are no signs that real estate activity will be slowing down any time soon!
Source: RPData