The new trend shaping Australia’s property market: Demographer

Trends shaping the property market are a fascination for anyone looking to find the next area to see capital growth, or to predict where demand may lie.

Interestingly enough, it’s not the ‘ageing’ population that has demographer Mark McCrindle’s interest – but ‘downageing’.

This is a concept where people live the typical lives of those that would usually be younger and is what McCrindle says is the next cultural trend to shape the country, interstate migration and the property markets.

While McCrindle doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll see those in their 50s turn to a lifestyle of two minute noodles and two minute relationships, he does suggest that we’ll see Australians retire later in their lives, working into their 70s, and moving into areas that have better employment opportunities. This may go some way to debunking the tree-change, sea-change culture that is the commonly expected next shift of the ageing population.

Presenting the trend to the Urban Development Institute’s National Congress in Brisbane, he announced that the property sector needs to rapidly change to react and accommodate to the downagers.

“Because we are, overall, living longer, we recognise the financial need to also work for more years and set ourselves up better from the start,” he said.

McCrindle’s own research, in conjunction with Australian Bureau of Statistics data, saw Australians working longer and also moving more frequently across the country.

“The states with the highest population growth rates WA, ACT and QLD (3.4%, 2.2% and 2.0% respectively) are also the states with the nation’s lowest unemployment rates 5.9%, 3.4% and 6.2%,” he said.

However, downageing is across market sectors and age groups.

“As a direct result of the downageing pattern, young Australians are less inclined to rush into employment or marriage, choosing instead to expand their tertiary education and save money whilst living at home with family members,” he said.

These delays in achieving ‘traditional’ milestones, such as starting a family or getting a job, is causing more mobility across communities, he said, noting this means that transient populations are more common.