Political upheaval in the US, a weaker Australian dollar and record migration intake have driven another surge in prospective real estate spending from foreign buyers and renters.
New PropTrack figures showed overseas searches of Aussie real estate sales jumped 9 per cent over July and were above the average level of winter inquiries over the past five years.
Much of the surge was due to elevated interest from US-based purchasers, with searches from America increasing 51 per cent annually.
The US is now the top country for buy searches across all states and territories bar SA, WA and Queensland.
PropTrack pointed to the looming election showdown between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris as a factor in the US increase.
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The US election has created ripples in the Aussie real estate market.
“It is common to see a spike in both rent and buy searches from overseas when there is political or economic turmoil in other countries,” said PropTrack analyst Karen Dellow.
“The increase in searches from the United States came at the time when polls suggested Donald Trump was favoured to win the election.”
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Ms Dellow added that many of the searches from the US could be Aussie expats wanting to return home, but there were other sources as well.
“The sustained growth in searches coming from the US over the past five years suggests that it is unlikely just from Australian citizens, but a combination of interest from different cohorts of the population,” a PropTrack report noted.
Property demand remains elevated in most capitals. Picture: Sam Ruttyn
The US dollar also hit a four-month high against the Aussie dollar over July, with the exchange rate well above the historical average.
“It remains to be seen whether the change in the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party will have an impact on searches in the coming months,” Ms Dellow said.
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The rise in US-based searches was more than double the rate of increase from some of the other countries with an improved appetite for buying properties Down Under.
These countries included India, where the annual search increase was about 22 per cent, Singapore with a nearly 20 per cent rise, and the United Kingdom at about 16 per cent.
Global searches of Aussie rental properties increased by 8 per cent over the month, driven by a massive jump in interest from Hong Kong and Singapore residents wanting to rent out homes.
Karen Dellow, PropTrack senior analyst, said the rise in US-based searches was at a time when Trump was the frontrunner in the US election.
Such rental searches typically predate a move to Australia, or in rarer cases, an investment property purchase.
It comes as ABS analysis showed migration inflow into Australia exceeded 1 million for the second year in a row, with 1.1 million new arrivals into the country recorded over the 2023/24 financial year.
Sydney and Melbourne took in the lion’s share of the migration intake, with both cities receiving over 200,000 arrivals the previous financial year – or roughly 57 per cent of the overall intake.
The latter figure rose to 77 per cent of intake when adding in arrivals into Perth and Brisbane.
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Co-founder of Chinese-language real estate portal Daniel Ho said some of the increase was catch up growth from the time borders were closed during the Covid pandemic.
He added that there were indications most new arrivals intended to stay “for the long term”.
Overseas searches of Aussie rentals often pre-dated a move to the country.
Daniel Wild, a director at conservative policy think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, said the migration intake was a key driver of Australia’s housing and inflation crisis.
“Australia has and always will be a welcoming country, but the federal government is setting Australia up for economic and social failure,” Mr Wild said.
“With eight out of 10 new migrants settling in our capital cities, the effects are felt every day on our congested roads, in ever-growing rental queues and in suburbs where working Australians are simply priced out of the market.”
New polling suggests Donald Trump is no longer the frontrunner and the US election has become a dead heat.
Mr Wild added that migration had become a “lazy” way for policy makers to grow the economy.
“IPA research has revealed in the 1990s, population growth only accounted for a third of total economic growth. In 2023, population growth accounted for 85 per cent of total economic growth,” he said.
“For the first time since records have been kept, per capita economic growth has been in recession for five consecutive quarters. While record migration intakes may be keeping the overall economic pie growing, Australians are receiving an ever-smaller slice.”
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