By Paul Millar
The fall-out from redundancies at Ford and Alcoa will impact Geelong’s housing market, a national property analyst has warned.
Andrew Wilson, a senior economist with Australian Property Monitors (APM), said Geelong was historically a healthy property market but rising unemployment would eventually take its toll.
“There will be a price to pay if the economy deteriorates,” Mr Wilson told The Independent.
But Geelong’s lifestyle, location and resilience would cushion it against any exodus of retrenched workers, he said.
“It is a lifestyle choice for many, with the Bellarine Peninsula and Surf Coast and the prices still being well below those in Melbourne.
“Geelong is also a lifestyle market and people will be prepared to make sacrifices to stay there.”
Mr Wilson believed the impact of historically low interest rates had now dissipated and “local supply and demand factors” were reasserting their predominant influence, particularly employment and income growth.
He pointed to the example of Wollongong where commentators feared property prices would fall drastically when it endured a similar economic blow in 2011 after a steel mill shed hundreds of jobs.
State Government figures show Wollongong’s median house priced dropped from $395,000 in 2010 to $380,000 in 2012 but recovered to $430,000 in 2013.
Mr Wilson hoped incentive packages for buyers would be unveiled ahead of the Victorian election at the end of November.
APM reported last month that Australian capital city prices had eased across the country since the start of the year.
