‘The fact is always obvious much too late…’
-J.D. Salinger (author)
If you have attended an Australian Property Update or two hosted by Blue Wealth, you’d probably remember us explaining the herd mentality. It is absolutely fascinating seeing this at play in all walks of life. The one we focus on mostly is how this affects the economy and property market.
Each day, we are more than ever influenced by what we hear in the media and the comparatively recent arrival of social media. I was recently at a social event where I met a journalist who had done some fill-in work for a print media outlet as a finance journalist.
‘What experience did you have in the financial markets?’ I asked.
‘None, I just wrote what I saw,’ he said.
… So what does this mean for us all?
Often (not always), the information that we are supplied with is created for one of two primary purposes: to sell advertising or to support an agenda. Additionally, it is often reported way too late for the majority of benefit to be achieved. Examples include: ‘hot suburb: strongest growth last year’, ‘boom clearance rates in the inner south’, et cetera.
Sydney recently experienced this when the west was criticised as an unfavourable place to buy property. Particular suburbs in Sydney’s west have subsequently grown in value into the double digits over the last year or two.
The lesson here is not to distrust media reports, it is to understand the role the media plays in the broader realm of property. The same goes for what you hear from people working in the industry. It is certainly not unheard of for an unethical institution to give misleading information for financial gain and for an academic to sensationalise information to obtain identity and notoriety.
This is why Blue Wealth is devoted to supplying our clients with industry-leading research. We do this by removing emotion from the equation and basing our findings on real facts and figures that are proven to drive demand in the property market into the long term.
