At this time of the year many property insiders choose to cast an eye forward and think about what might happen in 2024.

Whilst the market has been buoyant over the past six to eight months, the looming interest rate increase on Tuesday has many wondering what the outlook will be moving forward.

In last week's report, we discussed how in 2023, homeowners were choosing to hold on to a property for longer.

In 2013, the average length of homeownership for a House was seven years and for a Unit it was six years.

Just ten years later, home tenure has now increased to nine years for houses and eight years for units.

The recent history of the Australian housing market has been characterised by remarkable growth juxtaposed with periods of recalibration and localised corrections. Cities such as Sydney and Melbourne have frequently captured attention with their robust price escalations, but the landscape is far from uniform, with regional disparities in the pace and scale of growth.

A question that is often asked of us is are listing numbers increasing?

With all forms of media currently declaring that new listings to market are increasing, a report released by Realestate.com.au on Friday shows just how listing conditions vary from region to region and state to state.

The advantages for homeowners who made the decision to sell their home over the past few months has been highlighted by an article printed in last week's Gold Coast Bulletin.

The article, with the heading "Q3 price surge:Latest home values in every suburb revealed" showed that prices on the Gold Coast have increased strongly over the past three months.

We have two lead pieces this week, one being the monthly CoreLogic market update for September 2023 and the other an article that appeared on realestate.com.au discussing the increasing activity of investors.

In what is undoubtedly good news for the Gold Coast, our region is now being recognised as the most popular place in Australia to invest - and with good reason

Please see below our feature article from realestate.com.au with the heading "The State where investors are flocking".

With listing numbers now starting to increase, an interesting article appeared last week discussing which group of property owners have been the most active over the past few years.

The article with the headline "More homeowners are selling quickly - should we be worried" raises some surprising statistics with one key fact being that a higher percentage of properties coming to market are properties that have previously been purchased post the Covid pandemic.

When it comes to property, it's hard to avoid the theme that we have been running with over the past few weeks simply because it is the major talking piece in the media at present.

At present, all the signs are pointing to a sharp rise in listing numbers as we enter spring, with the discussion point being how this increase in listings will impact prices.

This week's lead story comes from a Proptrack report that focuses on this exact topic. The full report and its findings are below.

With many of our future sellers still taking a "wait and see" approach when it comes to selling, an article that appeared in yesterday's Gold Coast Bulletin should provide a significant confidence boost as well as a call to action.

Whilst many clients are waiting for the traditional Spring selling period, for those sellers that have chosen to list their home earlier, the results have been spectacular.

With Spring now less than two weeks away, the question of when is the right time to sell a property is becoming a hot topic for property owners.

Spring has traditionally been a time when sellers choose to sell a home, taking advantage of a seasonal increase in both warmer weather and buyer activity.

We have seen over the past few years that a lack of properties coming to market has aided price growth during the period of falling interest rates and now underpinning prices as interest rates climb.

Over the past 12 months we have repeatedly been told about the looming mortgage cliff in Australia.

It has been spoken about continuously since interest rates began to rise early last year.

Last week, Australia's largest lender announced that we are now entering a period whereby $52 Billion in mortgages will need to be refinanced at much higher rates between now and December 31st.

For the second month in a row, the Reserve Bank of Australia has chosen to leave the cash rate on hold at 4.1%.

Whilst this is the same outcome that followed the RBA's July meeting, last week's decision and the future outlook appears vastly different.

There have been several articles released last week with yet another new real estate phrase being mentioned.

Throughout 2021 & 2022 the term FOMO was widely used to discuss buyer sentiment in a buoyant market that translated into incredible price rises.

Information published last week confirmed South East Queensland's status as the number one choice in the country for both interstate and international buyers and renters.

The report, which was released last week and discussed in the weekend's Gold Coast Bulletin, showed that the Gold Coast was the number one location nationally when it came to interstate buyers looking to relocate.

For those looking to move and rent, the Gold Coast featured second for interstate migration with the Sunshine Coast claiming the top gong.

It has been suggested for a number of weeks now that the incredibly low number of properties on the market is likely to change in the later stages of 2023 and into 2024.

An article that appeared in the Australian Financial Review newspaper last week gives us an insight into how one segment of the market is likely to go through a transformation moving forward.

With the financial year now completed, the annual data dump of statistics has begun with the 2022-2023 financial year showing property prices have bottomed out and now appear to be rising again.

Whilst property prices across many suburbs on the Gold Coast have seen significant falls, a recovery is now underway according to the latest PropTrack data released last week.

Following on from our report last week discussing when was the right time to sell, there was another article released discussing the positives and negatives of selling this winter.

The article provides some great content to consider for our potential sellers who may be asking themselves this very question.

Over the last few months there has clearly been a rising level of buyer confidence in the Australian property market.

With prices initially stabalising and then beginning to rise, many economists were of the opinion that the bottom of the market was behind us and that price gains were again on the agenda.

That was at least until last week's Tuesday latest rate rise announcement and the Reserve Banks commentary on inflation which is again on the rise.

It's reasonable to expect that the latest interest rate rise will be felt much more deeply than any of the previous eleven rises with many homeowners already now at breaking point.

What an incredible turnaround we have seen in market conditions and sentiment over the last couple of months.

As always, there is one important cog that is late to the party when market conditions change and this time that element is sellers.

Whilst the growing buyer pool understands that the competition to purchase a home is fierce, many potential sellers are still sitting on the sidelines, unaware of the recent surge in activity.

A bit of a different look at the property market this week with a focus on one of the key drivers that will determine property prices over the medium to long term - Population growth.

One of Australia's leading demographers, Bernard Salt, recently presented his latest population forecasts for the 10 to 20 years to a group of the Commonwealth bank's top private clients.