Property forum talks up prosperity

GEELONG first-home buyers and investors heard from three property experts in an event at The Pier on monday.

Yellow Brick road founder and chair mark Bouris, investor and The Apprentice winner Andrew marello and YBr Geelong and Surf Coast branch principal Stuart Baker were the speakers at the “Prosperity Through Property” seminar, which attracted a crowd of more than 200 people.

YBr has been holding the seminars across Australia, and mr Bouris said the event was not about selling real estate or home loans, but espousing his belief that property was a superior asset class.

“I don’t necessarily think it’ll be the fastest growing asset class going forward… (but) residential mortgages in Australia are one of the best performing asset classes in the world.”

He said potential home owners could easily find out about the state of the economy as quickly as he did by checking the regular updates on the reserve Bank (interest rates) and Australian Bureau of Statistics (inflation) websites.

Mr Marello established his bona fides by saying that as a real estate agent, he had knocked on 10,000 doors in melbourne’s western suburbs, been invited into 3,000 lounge rooms and been involved in 1,000 property transactions.

He said he loved Geelong for a number of reasons, including that, investment-wise, “Geelong certainly has performed over and over and over, and it should give you some fundamental confidence in making decisions moving forward about your investment property.”

He said Parramatta was Australia’s fourth-largest city and he believed Geelong “had the fundamentals to do the same thing”, because it was within 90 minutes of the state capital and, unlike Sydney, median house prices were not $1 million.

Mr Baker said the Geelong region had significant predicted population growth, rising from 233,000 today to 320,000 by 2036, with 35,000 new houses required.

“So look no further, friends – this is the place.”