CoreLogic released its national Profile of the Australian Residential Property Investor Report, which comprises analysis around residential property investment across Australia, and seeks to quantify investment-related activity.
Nationally, investor owned dwellings comprise 26.9% of all housing stock, but 23.8% of the value of all housing stock, highlighting that investment in the housing market is generally across lower valuation segments compared with owner occupied homes.
At a national level investment is generally skewed towards the lower valuation brackets; 53.4% of investment-owned dwellings have a current estimated market value of less than $500,000, compared with 46.9% of owner occupied dwellings. Additionally, each capital city shows the large majority of investor -owned dwellings have an estimated market value that is lower than the capital city median value.
Across the broad product categories of houses versus units, investment is heavily concentrated within the unit sector, where investor owners comprise almost half (48%) of all attached housing.Conversely, detached housing ownership is more biased towards owner occupiers, with investors accounting for 17% of all detached housing stock.
CoreLogic estimates there are 2.6 million investor owned dwellings across Australia worth approximately $1.37 trillion. Based on the most recent taxation data, there are 2.03 million individuals who indicated they owned a residential rental property, implying a very low concentration of investment (approximately 1.28 investment properties per investor).
Actually, you need segment the investment sector, as we do, between Portfolio Investors, who have multiple investment properties (average number 8) and Property Investors who have one or two properties. Averaging across all property investors misses this important segmentation.
According to the ABS, the total value of Australia’s 9.7 million residential dwellings increased $15.4 billion to $5.9 trillion. The mean price of dwellings in Australia is now $613,900. CoreLogic, on the other hand, says property is worth an estimated $6.5 trillion across 9.6 million dwellings, with an average price of $677,000!
In any event, they are right to say “the housing asset class is worth more than three times the value of Australian superannuation funds ($2.0 trillion) and more than four times the value of Australian listed stocks ($1.5 trillion)”.
