Hi, my name is Greg Vincent and welcome to this week’s Acreage Market Wrap where I share an insight into How’s The Acreage Market?

This week I shared an update from Realestate.com.au Chief Economist Nerida Conisbee who explained Why Australia Won’t See House Prices In “Freefall”.

You see, there are always several micro-markets within each property market which means that suburbs throughout the different states & cities will experience differing, independent outcomes off the back of the Covid-19 pandemic.

If you haven’t seen it as yet, her article and short video are definitely worth checking out. Here’s a link to it..

If you’re currently going through a difficult time of embracing the pace of change which has been taking place, you may find the message I shared earlier this week about Embracing Change really helpful. It includes a short video featuring a motivational business fable about understanding how some people embrace change quickly and how others refuse to accept change or get stuck in a rut literally paralysed by fear. Here’s the link to that as well.

Something to be very careful of during this pandemic is that as a society there’s now so much talk about Social Distancing, but, actually I think they’ve got that phrasing incorrect.

You see, it’s actually Physical Distancing that we need to do to continue to stop the spread of Coronavirus, but, distancing yourself away socially can cause much deeper issues.

Fortunately, this crisis has happened in an era where we have social connection tools at our fingertips with technology like Zoom meetings, FaceTime, Skype, Google Hangouts and apps like House Party which allow us to stay connected during these unprecedented times.

Make sure you reach out to others if you’re feeling a bit isolated or get in contact with friends or family who you may feel could be a bit overwhelmed and are distancing themselves at present. Just a suggestion.

What’s Ahead

It’s been really encouraging to see that exactly a month after the SMH headlines said ‘Australia prepares for 50,000 to 150,000 coronavirus deaths’ that we are now seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, especially after Thursday’s headline promoted that ‘Australia on course to eliminate COVID-19, modelling shows’

…and Prime Minister, Scott Morrison shared an insight into Charting Our Way Out Of The Crisis which included some hopeful signs that if we keep flattening the curve, restrictions may get a bit more relaxed within the next four to five weeks, as well as a roll-out of infrastructure projects to help move the Australian economy forward. Here’s a link to that article too.

Also, over the Easter weekend, as predicted the NSW State Government announced a Rent Relief package which provided more certainty for Landlords and reinforced that tenants still have an obligation to pay their rent, which should help to instil more confidence back into the acreage market for property investors in search of land banking opportunities and solid rental yields.

How’s The Acreage Market?

As we start to come out the other side of this crisis, a lot of people will be re-assessing their current lifestyle and this week I noticed a large percentage of acreage enquiries were coming from people living in the city who realise that they can work remotely very effectively from a home office.

Many are already starting to look into moving away from the crowded city life as they would much prefer to live and work amongst a more spacious, peaceful, natural surroundings of an acreage or tree-change lifestyle, especially on the outer fringes of the city so they can still commute on the odd-day if required.

Currently there a total of 440 acreage properties For Sale across the entire region. This overall total includes 243 acreage properties For Sale throughout all of The Hawkesbury, 136 in The Hills and another 61 acreages For Sale within Sydney’s North-West acreage areas of Penrith and Blacktown.
This week, 9 new acreage listings came on the market, but, there were 7 properties withdrawn which means there was only a net increase of 2 properties added to the available stock levels. For those who are currently on the market, there was only the one acreage property Sold this week which means that the market is become more and more competitive. The positive news is that there’s 15 acreage properties currently ‘Under Contract’ across the region, however a large percentage of those appear to be ‘Under Option’ which means that they’re likely to take quite a while to appear in the Sold data.

Out in the field, this week, it’s been business as usual but in an unusual way. I’ve had a number of private inspections on properties and we’ve had over 200 people join in to receive updates about ‘Off-Market Acres’ where Secret Places are Revealed so far since I launched this brand new service at the beginning of April. The response has been much greater than I’d ever anticipated. The whole system works automatically. I receive notifications on my phone and it just keeps ticking over continuously adding more and more leads to my acreage database every single day.

If you’d like to know more information about how to get early access to any of our ‘Off-Market Acres’ listings simply click on the link to register now at www.offmarketacres.com.au

When registering for 'Off-Market Acres’ you’ll also receive a bonus copy of The Acreage Report 2020 (Autumn edition) which features an insight into ‘The Future For Acreage This Decade' as well as gaining Early-Access to any of the 'Off-Market' acreage listings that we have ‘Coming Soon’.

The Acreage Report features statistics about what's happening in the Hawkesbury, Hills & Sydney’s North West acreage market. Plus you also get instant access to a copy of The McGrath Report 2020 which features exclusive insights from one of Australia’s leading property experts, John McGrath.

Lastly, if you’re thinking of selling your acreage property, there’s never been a more important time to make sure that your real estate agent is working very closely with their buyer database as well as being fully in-tune with exactly what’s happening in the acreage market, especially during this COVID-19 period.

Someone said to me earlier this week…“

it’s hard to pump up a tyre that has a whole in it”

which is a pretty good analogy of where the market currently sits at the moment, however, it’s important to remember that when you’re buying acreage you should be making your decision based on your life, not based upon the current market.

You see, once the puncture in a tyre gets fixed the vehicle gets back up to speed very quickly and you should take a long term view of the acreage market because there’s a lot of positives that will come out of this current changing landscape which makes the lifestyle of living on acreage more appealing than ever before.

I’ve been in this industry for over 30 years and I’ve experienced enough tough markets to know what happens on the other side of a crisis ...and hopefully there’s still plenty of miles left on my tyres to be able to see what plays out throughout this next decade, because, I can see that there’s definitely some light at the end of this Coronavirus tunnel and there’s a lot on the horizon that we have to look forward to.

So, that’s it for this week’s Acreage Market Wrap.

If you’ve got any questions about anything I’ve shared this week or would like to discuss any of your acreage plans with me, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks for watching, stay safe, and bye for now.

Regards

Greg Vincent