A data guy's analysis of the Perth Housing market - Nov 2015

As a renter in Australia who lived nearly 10 years in a Canadian house that we built, cared for and loved it's nearly (no, it's fully) impossible to ignore the property market in Perth.

If you've read any of my posts you know that Perth in 2012 was absolutely booming.  Ex-pats and their companies were paying extreme sums per week for rental properties and at the lower end you could have up to 30 family's bidding for a single rental property the day it came on the market.  The rental housing market was on fire period with the number of vacant homes (units and houses) said to have hit a low of ~1200 September of 2012.

Things have changed.  A lot.

There are a lot of stories of the declines in real estate with examples of huge rent cuts, as well as significant discounting of homes to sell them. The problem is these are a sample of one.  

So, that said, I've started to pull data.  I've started with 3 key metrics which are readily available and get reported weekly - Sales of Houses, Number of houses on the market, and total vacant rental properties.

Note that I've selected just houses for sales data and properties on the market, not including units or land.  At this point I've not been able to do this with rentals, so it's total vacancies including units.

So here's the first chart:

The index on left is houses for sale on the market - reported weekly (on the blue line).  The index on the right is number of houses sold per week (on the red line).  The green line is a moving average of houses sold using an average of 12 weeks.  

  

Here's some quick first thoughts:

The sales trend is down per the moving average line, BUT, I'm unsure about the seasonality and I'm interested to see if sales come up in summer and show some of the big peaks that were shown last summer.  So far when you compare November 2015 vs 2014 sales are down ~21% or 130 houses per week.

The other thing is there is a significant change in the trend of houses on the market that starts on the 25th of August 2015 and really hasn't stopped since.  On average during the period from August 25th to Nov 26th - 180 houses have been added to the market.  (That's 180 more houses listed than sold per week for 12 weeks straight - 2200 houses)  

Next is a simple chart of rental vacancies.  Unfortunately I don't have data going back to 2012 but I do have reports that the low was Sept 2012 at 1200.  The week of Nov 26 hit 9400.

There's not much to say either than the trend is good for renters and bad for property investors trying to rent their properties.  

If anyone knows where I can get the rest of the data going back to, well as far back as I can go I'd love to hear it.  I'd also like to hear whether you find this data valuable / interesting.  

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Ant killing time - Dealing with our ant problem

Expats come to Australia with the worry of spiders, snakes, sharks, jelly fish and other animals / pests that will mess you up.  In Perth my experience is that you need to worry about ants.  Ants are everywhere in Perth...I might go so far as to say that Perth is one gigantic ant hill.

The last house we were in, a company provided McMansion that was only 3-5 years old really never had any issues on the inside.  They were brutal at times outside (mostly in the Summer) but could be controlled by dropping Ant Killa down the hole of the nest.

Our current abode is different.

We noticed them as soon as we moved in.  Mostly in our master bathroom and in areas near the kitchen.  They were bad the first summer but manageable.  When winter came around they disappeared giving us a truly false sense of victory.

The other problem is children.

My lovely children (who we've decided we're going to keep despite this problem) leave food bits all over the house.  30 minutes after the food bit is left, a trail of ants (somewhere in the range of hundreds to thousands) move in for the extraction.  They are seriously impressive how they work as a team to move fairly large bits of food.

The ants are now everywhere.  They're on the counters, the kitchen table, all of the hardwood and tile surfaces and even some of the rugs.  The seem to come in through holes in the brick and baseboards and the second there is food present the numbers climb exponentially.

I've had enough...it's ant killing time.

Today I'm going to Bunnings.  My plan is to use several possible methods, in a disciplined and routine manner until their under control.

Here we go....

Day 1, a Saturday, I spend $25 on Ant Killa see image above in a big bulk 5Kg bag.  $9 on indoor Ant traps from 2 different brands and $18 on Bayer Advanced Ant and Wasp dust.

The strategy is going to be this...

1) Indoors where there is a steady trail of Ants I'm going to put Ant traps.

2) Outdoors where there are noticeable ant hills I'm going to lay down Ant Killa (a sand like compound) directly into the holes.

3) The Ant and Wasp dust is going to be put in spots where the Ants seem to be penetrating wood and concrete to get into / out of the house and any areas where they seem to be congregating.

So on the Saturday I put down 5 traps and a healthy amount of Ant Killa outside on the ant hills.  The dust would have to wait for another day.

Day 3 progress.

The ants are still around but the numbers have dropped significantly.  The ant traps do seem to attract the ants but I can't say for sure what affect they're having.  A couple of areas that had massive numbers of ants have very few now which honestly surprises me.  In a few days I'll check back and then may add the dust.

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Getting stranded on Rottnest Island

Back in early September we decided to take a short 4 day trip to Rottnest Island.  Rottnest for those who don't know is an Island off the coast of Western Australia which takes approximately 30-45 minutes by ferry.

A couple of key points about Rottnest:
There are essentially no cars on the Island outside of support vehicals and a bus that runs the length of the Island.  The main method of transport is bicycle which you can rent or bring across on the ferry.  This made a perfect place for Owen who wasn't yet 4 to practice his cycling skills and charm the locals doing it.

Rottnest is one of two islands in Western Australia where you can find the Quokka.  A cute agreeable marsupial which is everywhere on the Island.

Hello Quokka

Rottnest was once a military installation and still has some of the original equipment (A massive gun that was installed to protect the Submarines that were stationed at Fremantle - the second largest installation in the world only to Pearl Harbour during the second world war) as well as some of the tunnels that were built to support the installation.

Gun from World War II....it had a ~30km range

Storm coming in....

September meant we had the Island nearly to ourselves AND that the weather may not be the model of consistency that Western Australia was normally known for.  On the third evening the Wind exceeded 100km's an hour.  The following day, which was supposed to include our journey out the Ferrys were cancelled providing another day (at no cost) on the Island.  I can't say that we didn't enjoy being stranded an extra day. :)

I highly recommend the trip to Rottnest!

A couple of other notes:
We stayed at the Geordie Bay Cabins on the Island which are self contained with kitchens and bbq's and all have a view of the Indian Ocean over Geordie Bay.  They are basic, rustic and everything worked.  The cabins are about a 10-15 minute bike ride from the main town.  Luggage service was provided with the ferry ticket.

We brought an esky / cooler with food for the trip.  Food is quite expensive on the Island.

Geordie Bay

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Taking back control - An Update

This is an update to the post Expat life can be a bleepedy bleep.  It can be read here: http://expatchapter.blogspot.com/2014/01/expat-life-can-be-bleepedy-bleep.html

Uncertainty with a family in tow is beyond stress.  In this case that uncertainty which began on the first of November had almost become paralysing.  In the span of 3+ months we were preparing for a move to Norway, pushed to move to the dirtiest city in the US (which was never going to happen), talking seriously about Oman, decided to move to Houston... and then not to move to Houston.

The one thing that was certain was on January 31, the lease on our company provided house would expire.  In early January I was told that jobs at my level were scarce due to current cost reviews and if I did not accept the dirty California city job and/or find something else, the family would be sent back to Canada and my employment terminated.  

Mid January, I was told the family would be moved into temporary accomodation and our things moved into storage.  At that point I felt the need to push back.  "Ummm no sorry, that's not going to happen.  Find me a job, tell me where we're going, then we will move.  Get a plan together."  Amazingly it bought some time.

In late January a decent offer for a 20 month role was made in Houston.  Ok...lets get our questions together and get them answered...looks like we're moving to Houston.  There are worse places in the world.  

Thoughts of what this new life would look like became impossible to suppress.  I'm going to move to Houston and sit in traffic.  The car will be nice but it will be parked on a freeway.  Days will go by where I come home after the kids are in bed.  Another 6 months of transition coming for the family, and then in 20 months we'll do this all over again.

Time to take control of the situation.

The questions about Houston would never really be answered.  I suppose a combination of expectation that I would just take what was offered and lovely HR people strangled by processes preventing them from doing what mattered.

"Show me the termination package.  Make it so we can stay in Perth.  We're not getting on an airplane."

After 3 weeks of back and forth I signed a termination package.  In the middle we were moved to temporary accommodation and had our stuff moved to storage.

Uncertainty OVER, time to act!

In 2 weeks we:

Found an awesome house North of the CBD at a reasonable rental.

Found a job with another US company in the middle of an aquisition integration in Perth

Had the visa transfered to new company

Bought a second car 

Got Olivia into a new school.

Moved into the new house.

Started to relax.

In all I would work for "The big red machine" for just under 9 years.  It's a company filled with talented wonderful people who I will miss dearly.  As much as this process made the company seem evil, it's hardly the case.  More-so a case of  bad timing and a few bad apples in the mix. 

Time to go back to enjoying life and putting the focus back to the family.

Owen at the new house

             

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