Atlas Market Insights

Another factor in this change is the newfound popularity of remote working, which encourages buyers to look to outer fringes where supply of property is high, and prices are lower. This shift in the market will result in many looking for property on the fringes. However, this will most likely result in the “ripple effect” as capital gains in one suburb move on to others. As people purchase fringe properties for an increased price, the sellers of these properties will have received large capital gains and may choose to purchase property in metro areas. This will then increase metro prices and so on. Even though outer suburbs are increasingly popular at the moment, the metro regions are highly connected to activity on the outskirts and will increase property prices overall. What is going to happen when pandemic-specific government subsidies and concessions end? There will undoubtedly be some headwinds as this fiscal support phases out, but if we look back through 2020, we encountered these same challenges at the end of the year. Jobkeeper started winding down and banks were moving through the 6-month mortgage deferral plans. However, we got through this first “fiscal cliff” relatively unscathed as unemployment trended lower and jobs growth higher. It’s likely we will continue to see the economy improving as the second “fiscal cliff” approaches, but we are likely to see a slow down as a recovery. JobKeeper was a critical supporting factor of economic resilience in Australia, and the key reason it is tapering off from March is because the economy has almost returned to normal conditions. In fact, I believe that if we started to see the economy falter in reaction to less fiscal support, then we would see its reimplementation. It’ll be a case of watch and see but I think if past performance is 8