Confidence in the retirement living sector’s ability to grow has fallen off a cliff thanks to COVID – but there are some ‘green shoots’ to be found in the latest ANZ/Property Council Survey for the December 2020 quarter.
Check out the graph above.
As you can see, expectations for capital values across the sector have taken a swan dive since the pandemic began – and are not expected to improve in the near-term.
Unsurprisingly, expectations are at their lowest in Victoria – where the sector has been most impacted by lockdown restrictions – followed by NSW.
Western Australia is the only state where values are expected to nudge back into positive territory by December.
Overall, the survey – which recorded the responses of 857 people working in the property sector between 7 to 23 September 2020, prior to the Federal Budget – found that national confidence levels increased by 6 index points to 82 – an increase from its biggest ever drop in the March quarter but still well below the historical survey average of 123.
ANZ’s Senior Economist Felicity Emmett credits this increase in sentiment to the residential construction sector and the stimulus measures such as the HomeBuilder grant provided by the Federal Government as well as support from State and Territory Governments for new and first home buyers.
The question is: are similar measures needed to turn around confidence in retirement living?
