Weak dollar spurs foreign property surge in the first quarter of 2015.
Australia's weaker dollar has made it cheaper for overseas investors to buy Australian property, with one in five new houses in New South Wales and Victoria now being purchased by a foreign buyer, the latest National Australia Bank Residential Property Survey shows. NAB data shows that across Australia, 15.6 per cent of new residential dwellings were sold to offshore buyers in the March 2015 quarter. The figure was 21 per cent in New South Wales, up from less than 15 per cent in the previous three months, and 20 per cent in Victoria.
Only 5 per cent of offshore buyers spent more than $5 million on Australian property, and houses and apartments costing between $500,000 and $1 million made up 41 per cent of the properties sold to offshore buyers, the data reveals.
"Foreign buyers want an [investment] bolthole, somewhere that's good to go if things turn sour [in their own countries]," said NAB chief economist Alan Oster, reports The Australian Financial Review.