How can you pick the bottom of the market?

As the Gladstone market continues its correction, one starts to wonder if the bottom is near.

Everyone laments, once a market has turned upwards, that they didn’t get in at the bottom.

Whether it’s property or shares, investors across the world exert an enormous amount of effort in an attempt to predict the lowest point of a market. The unfortunate truth to this is that you never really know the market has bottomed until it has already started rising.

There are indicators of a bottoming market that precede the actual point at which conditions improve and we are beginning to see these signals in Gladstone.

• Prices on older established dwellings are now selling at pricing in line with 2006 levels; now lower than the previous market trough of 2009;
• Multiple offers are being made on properties in this category
• Open for inspection numbers are increasing
• Interest rates are unlikely to fall further
• The Australian dollar is likely to fall providing economic benefits for Gladstone
• Rental vacancy has fallen from around 9% in late 2013 to 6% now. Vacancy is still falling.

It is still the case that there are three distinct and separate residential sectors in Gladstone – each in different stages of the cycle. The most advanced is the old established housing market, with new housing and apartment / townhouse product still in the correction phase.

If there were a bell that signalled a turn in a property market, it may well be ringing now.