New research from the Property Investment Professionals of Australia (PIPA) has found that one third of first-time buyers are opting to invest rather than to buy a home.
The 2018 PIPA Investor Sentiment Survey found that about 36 per cent of first-time buyers had opted to invest in property and continue to rent instead of buying a home to live in over the past 12 months.
PIPA chairman Peter Koulizos said while it was the first time that specific question had been asked in the annual survey, one could presume that rentvesting as an investment strategy had been a trend for some time.
“What this insight shows us is that first-time property buyers generally have probably been more active over recent years than official statistics originally recorded,” he said.
“The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publicly admitted issues with first home buyer statistics from 2012 to 2016, in part due to some lenders only reporting loans to first home buyers who received a First Home Owner Grant.
“Of course, most grants were restricted to first-timers buying a new property as their home not as an investment many years ago.”
According to the latest ABS statistics, about 18 per cent of dwellings financed in Australia were to first-time buyers in September.
Mr Koulizos said revisions to the official data meant that first-time investors were now being counted, however, issues could reportedly still persist in the statistics according to the bureau.
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