I find the Property discussions fascinating,is there going to be a crash maybe heres my thoughts and love a good discusion first the mining boom is well and truly over its moved from construction to production so needs a lot less workers less demand for workers means a drop in wages also,population increase seems to be a deeply guarded figure where there seems to be a bad obsession for property ownership (more than one) at the peak a 1000 people a week were coming here the last one i heard was 750 a week were coming but they don't say how many are leaving the rental vacancy rate as gone up the government release a lot of land about 2 years ago which brought on the housing boom,only 1 in 4 are first time buyers leaving me to think a lot of the rest are investment properties so when they are completed the vacancy rate will climb further leaving some investors over exposed and if they can't fill there properties can they afford to pay for them empty,i work in flooring and have done quite a few rentals so they can sell and get out,a lot of people don't understand negative gearing and fall for the seminars where they say you can own a property investment for $50 a week my understanding is if you earn $80000 a year and you have a property that looses $20000 a year you can write it off against your earnings so you pay tax on $60000 a year all good but if you payed tax on $80000 you would have to pay $6000 more in tax but you would have $14000 in your pocket the only way you make money is if the property goes up in value which has to be more than $14000 a year then you still have tax on capital gains now i know its a little more complicated than that but the fact is house prices are dropping in perth mining won't hit $100 a tonne for many years contractors rates are falling unemployment will go up there are too many houses all this when interest rates are at there lowest and china is still slowing,greece can't sort its problems out will Perth fall into recession i think so how bad don't know depends on population growth house have already fallen %10 in some areas were are looking at buying but will wait for 6 months when things will become clearer i just think the property market could snowball because of too many property investors.
but too most of you would i come to Perth in the resent climate the answer is Yes there is always opportunity and if you have a job a lot of it won't affect you its still great place to live i would recommend renting for a year at least if not 2 until you understand place i know a lot of people that bought quickly and don't like the house bought
as i said i love a discussion and if my facts are wrong i liked to be corrected but this is opinion and I'm not interested in a slanging match we all have different views
to anyone moving over Go for it and i wish you the best of luck its not easy and some of you will have hard times but we find it well wroth it
Neil