Canberra robust despite public service cuts
Despite dire predictions that public service cuts would stall the Canberra market, a local buyer’s agent believes the city has remained unaffected.
After 16,500 public sector redundancies were announced in the federal Budget, Todd Hunter from wHeregroup predicted the Canberra market would experience a downturn.
However, buyer’s agent Tom Duffy from Canberra Property Buyer Solutions said demand for good-quality properties remains high.
“Anything that has quality is having a bit of competition on that property. That’s the same for any good area in Canberra,” Mr Duffy said.
He said the inner-city areas were still attracting good prices and high interest from buyers.
Overall, he said the Canberra market was fairly immune from “political nonsense”.
“Budget cutbacks do not tend to have a long-term effect. It has an immediate effect in terms of slowing down activity for a few months but the market does not really drop,” he said.
Mr Duffy believes the Canberra market tends to fluctuate as new government workers arrive in January and then others leave towards December.
“The city always operates as it normally does, which means a big influx of people every year and a lot of people leaving every year,” he said.
“It's the nature of the town, having the public service, the Department of Defence and the universities.”
Ultimately, he believes the Canberra market tends to be stable.
“It’s a very safe market in Canberra,” he said.
According to RP Data, the median house prices has risen by 5.7 per cent in the year to June.