Pete Wargent blogspot

PERSONAL/BUSINESS COACH | PROPERTY BUYER | ANALYST

'Must-read, must-follow, one of the best analysts in Australia' - Stephen Koukoulas, ex-Senior Economics Adviser to Prime Minister Gillard.

'One of Australia's brightest financial minds, must-follow for accurate & in-depth analysis' - David Scutt, Markets & Economics Editor, Sydney Morning Herald.

'I've been investing 40 years & still learn new concepts from Pete; one of the best commentators...and not just a theorist!' - Michael Yardney, Amazon #1 bestseller.

Thursday, 15 May 2025

Jobs & participation burst to record high

Jobs burst higher again

The jobs figures have been a little bit all over the place over recent months.

In February there was suddenly a wild -57,000 decline, followed by a revised +36,000 for March, and now in April employment apparently burst +89,000 higher, driven by a renewed surge in female employment.

It usually pays to either zoom out or follow the trend when you get such levels of volatility.

Looking through the monthly ‘numberwang’, the average employment gain over the past 3 months was steady enough at +23,000.

The jobs figures have mostly simply continued to confound the economic bears, with employment rising to a new high of 14,642,700, some +390,000 higher than the same time last year.

There was also a jump higher in the participation rate in April, reflected in a modest rise in the number of unemployed persons, while the seasonally unemployment rate was basically unchanged in rising from 4.05 per cent to 4.07 per cent over the month.

There have been just a few slightly softer aspects to the labour force figures of late.

Reportedly job vacancies figures have been well off the highs, pointing to a likely somewhat softer pace of hiring ahead.

Meanwhile Roy Morgan Research reported that the ‘real’ unemployment rate has increased to a much softer 11.1 per cent.

Back with the Australian Bureau of Statistics release today, the underemployment rate was slightly higher at 6 per cent, and the under-utilisation rate also rose from 9.9 per cent to 10.1 percent.

That said, both measures of slack remain plenty tighter than they were at the onset of the pandemic in early 2020. 

The wrap

Overall, this was a remarkably strong set of numbers, all things considered, and there’s even a case for the Reserve Bank holding fire on interest rates this month to await further data, despite the inflation pressures having mostly ebbed away.

Still, market are pricing a cut this month as 96 per cent likely – basically a lock – but there are now only three interest rate cuts priced in for the remainder of 2025, as markets have calmed considerably over recent weeks.

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Download our free property buying guide here

You can also check out a few of our recent property purchases here

Get in contact with us today if strategic property investment is your thing. 

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Listen in to our podcasts

The Australian Property Podcast is rapidly becoming one of Australia's biggest business podcasts, now with well over 50,000 audio downloads per month, and growing fast.

And our popular Low Rates High Returns Show also remains available on Spotify.

    3. Subscribe for my free daily blog

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You can also catch up with me daily on Twitter here, where I'm active daily and have over 14,900 followers. 

By the way, I'm an 8-times published author on finance, investing, and business, so you can check out some of my books here.

My new book, co-authored with Cate Bakos is available to buy here or on Amazon here - follow our book release on Facebook here and at our Buy Right podcast series here

4. Work with me privately

For a limited time you can book in a free diagnosis call with me here, so book in a call today

Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Wages beat expectations by a bit

Wage prices up 0.9 per cent

After missing expectations last quarter with just 0.7 per cent wage price growth, the economy righted itself in the March 2025 quarter, this time notching 0.9 per cent growth.

Over the year, wage price growth has steadied at 3.4 per cent. 


The March quarter result was partly driven by a 1 per cent bump in public sector pay.

Private sector wages have been far more lacklustre over the past year, rising by only 3.3 per cent, posing little or no threat of a wages breakout driving inflation. 


In that context, it probably wasn't a huge surprise that the largest growth in wages over the year was seen in Canberra and the ACT at 3.9 per cent. 


Housing stymied

Overall, this was a slightly higher than expected result for the March quarter, reversing the previous quarter's weakness, and bringing wages growth in line with Reserve Bank forecasts. 

A hiatus in the tariff turmoil has certainly becalmed markets over the past week or two, but there's little to suggest that the May interest rate meeting will be anything over than a 25 basis points cut.

Today's lending indicators figures showed that housing lending fell -3.4 per cent in the March quarter, as higher interest rates and tight lending setting stymied activity. 

The construction sector has been effectively crippled, with 2,800 construction and development firms going bust over the past year. 

However, while the regulatory 3 percentage points home loan lending assessment buffer has worked to decrease the number of loans and activity in the housing market, it has also largely served to shut out lower income earners in favour of households earning $200,000 or more.

The average new home loan size increased by $50,000 (ex-refinancing) over the year to March, driven by non-first homebuyers, for whom the average loan size increased by $64,000.


Interest rates are expected to fall from here, so the value of the buffer has more than run its course. 

Lending for new housing supply remains fairly subdued. 


Source: Housing Industry Association

---

    1. Download our property buying guide

Download our free property buying guide here

You can also check out a few of our recent property purchases here

Get in contact with us today if strategic property investment is your thing. 

    2. Subscribe to our Top 10 Podcasts for Investors

Listen in to our podcasts

The Australian Property Podcast is rapidly becoming one of Australia's biggest business podcasts, now with well over 50,000 audio downloads per month, and growing fast.

And our popular Low Rates High Returns Show also remains available on Spotify.

    3. Subscribe for my free daily blog

Subscribe for my free daily blog with some 3¾ million hits here

You can also catch up with me daily on Twitter here, where I'm active daily and have over 14,900 followers. 

By the way, I'm an 8-times published author on finance, investing, and business, so you can check out some of my books here.

My new book, co-authored with Cate Bakos is available to buy here or on Amazon here - follow our book release on Facebook here and at our Buy Right podcast series here

4. Work with me privately

For a limited time you can book in a free diagnosis call with me here, so book in a call today

Q&A: How do I generate passive income from property?

Property podcast

This week on the midweek podcast, we ran through some of the listener Q&A.

Tune in here (or click on the image below):


You can watch the YouTube version here (or below):


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    1. Download our property buying guide

Download our free property buying guide here

You can also check out a few of our recent property purchases here

Get in contact with us today if strategic property investment is your thing. 

    2. Subscribe to our Top 10 Podcasts for Investors

Listen in to our podcasts

The Australian Property Podcast is rapidly becoming one of Australia's biggest business podcasts, now with well over 50,000 audio downloads per month, and growing fast.

And our popular Low Rates High Returns Show also remains available on Spotify.

    3. Subscribe for my free daily blog

Subscribe for my free daily blog with some 3¾ million hits here

You can also catch up with me daily on Twitter here, where I'm active daily and have over 14,900 followers. 

By the way, I'm an 8-times published author on finance, investing, and business, so you can check out some of my books here.

My new book, co-authored with Cate Bakos is available to buy here or on Amazon here - follow our book release on Facebook here and at our Buy Right podcast series here

4. Work with me privately

For a limited time you can book in a free diagnosis call with me here, so book in a call today

Tuesday, 13 May 2025

Seasonal softness in the rental market

Melbourne rentals soften

The rental vacancy rate ticked up to 1.8 per cent in Melbourne in April, well up from 1.1 per cent a year earlier, on softer demand, according to SQM Research. 

Sydney also saw a modest increase in its rental vacancy rate to 1.5 per cent over the month, reflecting some of the usual winter softness in demand.

Darwin is suddenly getting tight with a rental vacancy rate of only 0.7 per cent, while Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, and Hobart all have extremely tight rental vacancy rates of 1 per cent or below. 


Net permanent and long-term immigration slowed slightly to 437,000 over the year to April.

This is well below the post-pandemic peak of 498,000, but there has been a few signs of re-acceleration over the past few months.


Asking rents increased 3.9 per cent over the year to April, which is slower than we have seen over recent years.

Tim Gurner warned today of a 15-year rental crisis looming for Australia, due to the ongoing high demand and a general lack of support for rental supply. 

Louis Christopher of SQM Research expects the rental market softness to last no more than a few months. 

You can read SQM Research's media release here.

Financial and stock markets took a good deal of solace over the past 24 hours in a 90-day pause in the US-China tariff wars, pushing bond yields to their highest level in a month. 

---

    1. Download our property buying guide

Download our free property buying guide here

You can also check out a few of our recent property purchases here

Get in contact with us today if strategic property investment is your thing. 

    2. Subscribe to our Top 10 Podcasts for Investors

Listen in to our podcasts

The Australian Property Podcast is rapidly becoming one of Australia's biggest business podcasts, now with well over 50,000 audio downloads per month, and growing fast.

And our popular Low Rates High Returns Show also remains available on Spotify.

    3. Subscribe for my free daily blog

Subscribe for my free daily blog with some 3¾ million hits here

You can also catch up with me daily on Twitter here, where I'm active daily and have over 14,900 followers. 

By the way, I'm an 8-times published author on finance, investing, and business, so you can check out some of my books here.

My new book, co-authored with Cate Bakos is available to buy here or on Amazon here - follow our book release on Facebook here and at our Buy Right podcast series here

4. Work with me privately

For a limited time you can book in a free diagnosis call with me here, so book in a call today

Monday, 12 May 2025

Melbourne's population to hit NINE million by 2050

Rent, buy, or rent-vest?

It's quite often debated whether you'd be better to buy a home, or to rent for the long term and invest your money elsewhere.

Of course, buying a home isn't only about the numbers.

It's also about some of the intangible benefits of having a home to call your own and to build to your own taste. 

I was quite happy to be a rent-vestor when I was younger, for example, because I moved around a lot, lived overseas in Asia a fair bit, and I loved the flexibility of renting in cool places to live while simultaneously growing a property portfolio. 

But having kids tends to change things quite a bit, so I ended up buying a house (unlevered), to renovate and enjoy the security of tenure, without living in fear of being punted out by the landlord, or the rents being suddenly jacked up to ridiculous levels, or being unable to find a place near the local school, and so on.

Stuart Wemyss of ProSolution discussed some of the pros (flexibility, asset selection) and notable cons (capital gains tax exemption foregone, endlessly rising rents) surrounding this very subject of rent-vesting in The Australian newspaper this week. 

To be fair, I guess he needs something to take his mind off Geelong's recent form 😀 - and he makes some very good points about the tax and cashflow implications, although it is also possible to refinance equity out of a property portfolio in the pre-retirement phase.

I've also seen those YouTube thumbnails, of course:

"Do NOT buy a house, you idiots...just buy stocks!" and the like, by all the various investment gurus and fin-fluencers.

I think that the best advice to take away from this genre of videos is to run the numbers.

If you hate housing and love stocks, it's certainly one option. 

I will note in passing, though, that I know more than a few people in my peer group who decided to not to buy in Sydney years ago, and the traumatising nature of the rental market has lately turned some of them from aspirational young capitalists into rabid middle-aged socialists...

Melbourne population to hit to NINE million

A news piece caught my eye this week when it was casually noted in passing that Melbourne's population is expected to exploded to...*checks notes*...NINE million by 2050. 

9 million...9,000,000!...from about 5,350,000 or so today.

There's quite a lot of discussion about this in various government literature and online, some of which allows residents to 'have a say' in how their city should shape up. 


Albeit, it seems that 'having a say' doesn't anywhere extend to questioning whether expanding the population of the capital cities at warp speed is actually that desirable or smart an idea at all.

It's just simply assumed that it will happen. 

An urban planning fait accompli, if you will.

Note that the population growth of Melbourne and particularly Sydney will almost all be driven via immigration, not natural population growth, so there will be integration challenges alongside the logistical challenge of providing housing and infrastructure for millions of new bodies. 


Personally, while I'm obviously pro-immigration, I'm equally not so sure about the costs and purported benefits of growing at a breakneck +150,000 per annum pace for the next 25 years, but since I won't be living in Melbourne I guess it doesn't impact me all that much anyway. 

What I will note is that if it was me and I was a young person starting out in the big capital cities, I would buy a first unit or home as soon as I was able to, and start paying down the mortgage. 

The rental market absolutely sucks at the moment - and probably will for the next 25 years looking at these numbers, combined with the government's lacklustre efforts to improve matters - and owning a mortgaged home can give you plenty of optionality later in the journey for using equity to invest elsewhere. 

But, hey, that's just me. 

"Run the numbers", as they always say on YouTube.

---

    1. Download our property buying guide

Download our free property buying guide here

You can also check out a few of our recent property purchases here

Get in contact with us today if strategic property investment is your thing. 

    2. Subscribe to our Top 10 Podcasts for Investors

Listen in to our podcasts

The Australian Property Podcast is rapidly becoming one of Australia's biggest business podcasts, now with well over 50,000 audio downloads per month, and growing fast.

And our popular Low Rates High Returns Show also remains available on Spotify.

    3. Subscribe for my free daily blog

Subscribe for my free daily blog with some 3¾ million hits here

You can also catch up with me daily on Twitter here, where I'm active daily and have over 14,900 followers. 

By the way, I'm an 8-times published author on finance, investing, and business, so you can check out some of my books here.

My new book, co-authored with Cate Bakos is available to buy here or on Amazon here - follow our book release on Facebook here and at our Buy Right podcast series here

4. Work with me privately

For a limited time you can book in a free diagnosis call with me here, so book in a call today

Sunday, 11 May 2025

2-Sense: Labor secures BIG election mandate

2-Sense podcast

This week on the podcast, Batesy and I discussed the landslide election victory, the introduction of 10-year interest-only mortgages, and more besides.

Tune in here (or click on the image below):


You can also watch the video version here:


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    1. Download our property buying guide

Download our free property buying guide here

You can also check out a few of our recent property purchases here

Get in contact with us today if strategic property investment is your thing. 

    2. Subscribe to our Top 10 Podcasts for Investors

Listen in to our podcasts

The Australian Property Podcast is rapidly becoming one of Australia's biggest business podcasts, now with well over 50,000 audio downloads per month, and growing fast.

And our popular Low Rates High Returns Show also remains available on Spotify.

    3. Subscribe for my free daily blog

Subscribe for my free daily blog with some 3¾ million hits here

You can also catch up with me daily on Twitter here, where I'm active daily and have over 14,900 followers. 

By the way, I'm an 8-times published author on finance, investing, and business, so you can check out some of my books here.

My new book, co-authored with Cate Bakos is available to buy here or on Amazon here - follow our book release on Facebook here and at our Buy Right podcast series here

4. Work with me privately

For a limited time you can book in a free diagnosis call with me here, so book in a call today

Thursday, 8 May 2025

What does the election mean for property?

Election Webinar

I joined Eric Wu of RealWay finance on last night's webinar to discuss the election results, and what it all means for property.

You can watch on YouTube here (or below):


Join us for tonight's webinar at 7pm, where we discuss how to build a portfolio to grow passive income

Sign up here for free (or click on the image below):


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    1. Download our property buying guide

Download our free property buying guide here

You can also check out a few of our recent property purchases here

Get in contact with us today if strategic property investment is your thing. 

    2. Subscribe to our Top 10 Podcasts for Investors

Listen in to our podcasts

The Australian Property Podcast is rapidly becoming one of Australia's biggest business podcasts, now with well over 50,000 audio downloads per month, and growing fast.

And our popular Low Rates High Returns Show also remains available on Spotify.

    3. Subscribe for my free daily blog

Subscribe for my free daily blog with some 3¾ million hits here

You can also catch up with me daily on Twitter here, where I'm active daily and have over 14,900 followers. 

By the way, I'm an 8-times published author on finance, investing, and business, so you can check out some of my books here.

My new book, co-authored with Cate Bakos is available to buy here or on Amazon here - follow our book release on Facebook here and at our Buy Right podcast series here

4. Work with me privately

For a limited time you can book in a free diagnosis call with me here, so book in a call today

Wednesday, 7 May 2025

Is it time to buy property or shares?

Podcast

I joined Owen Rask to discuss where's best to invest right now...in property or in shares?

Tune in here (or click on the image below):


You can also watch the video version here:


---

    1. Download our property buying guide

Download our free property buying guide here

You can also check out a few of our recent property purchases here

Get in contact with us today if strategic property investment is your thing. 

    2. Subscribe to our Top 10 Podcasts for Investors

Listen in to our podcasts

The Australian Property Podcast is rapidly becoming one of Australia's biggest business podcasts, now with well over 50,000 audio downloads per month, and growing fast.

And our popular Low Rates High Returns Show also remains available on Spotify.

    3. Subscribe for my free daily blog

Subscribe for my free daily blog with some 3¾ million hits here

You can also catch up with me daily on Twitter here, where I'm active daily and have over 14,900 followers. 

By the way, I'm an 8-times published author on finance, investing, and business, so you can check out some of my books here.

My new book, co-authored with Cate Bakos is available to buy here or on Amazon here - follow our book release on Facebook here and at our Buy Right podcast series here

4. Work with me privately

For a limited time you can book in a free diagnosis call with me here, so book in a call today