18 April 2012
The economic outlook for the property sector in NSW is not looking good according to experts says the Urban Taskforce.
At an economic outlook forum today industry experts gave a negative prognosis for an uplift to the depressed property industry in NSW. said Urban Taskforce CEO Chris Johnson
Jason Anderson from MacroPlan Dimasi demonstrated that the residential market in NSW has slumped from the 50,000 homes delivered in 2003 to only 30,000 last year. He called for more inner city industrial sites to become residential.
David Rees from Jones Lang LaSalle in commenting on the retail sector profiled the dramatic drop in retail sales since 2003.
Anthony De Francesco showed that the commercial market was flat across Australia but was building up from the GFC days. In Sydney however, the returns from commercial property at 9.6% were lower than Melbournes 12.7% and Perths 12.6%.
The overall confidence of Urban Taskforce members, who were surveyed at the forum today, in relation to the future prospects of the property industry, was quite negative. said CEO Chris Johnson The consensus was that the industry will be flat for the next few years unless the state government takes action. A question on the performance of the NSW Government in helping the development industry over the last 12 months received a low score with most ranking it at average to poor.
More worrying, is that most of our members surveyed also ranked their expectation of the state governments performance in helping the industry over the next 2 years in the average to poor category.
Real leadership is needed now if we are going to make the property industry a positive contributor to the States economy and if we are going to make NSW number one again.
A big part of the problem in NSW is about confidence and the industry needs some positive signals from the government that it wants development.
