One of the biggest social changes in the Western Australian property market is the growing number of people working from home.
The values of properties in lifestyle locations throughout the state, which have benefited from this working-from-home trend during recent years, will be further boosted by high petrol prices, according to Nu Wealth Managing Director Daniel McQuillan.
He said the working-from-home trend had grown steadily over the past two decades and had been given a huge lift by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Since 2000, the number of people working from home grew steadily from 21 per cent to 32.1 per cent in 2019. The pandemic saw this number jump to 41 per cent by 2021,” he said.
“Working from home has encouraged huge advances in technology such as online conference platforms, as well as greater flexibility in workplace practices over the past two decades.
“This trend is already impacting on the property market, with lifestyle locations now in high demand from buyers.
“This new dynamic in the property market has seen strong demand for properties in the outer coastal areas of Perth, tree change suburbs in the Perth Hills area, as well as other lifestyle locations like the Swan Valley.
“In addition, Nu Wealth is finding that there has been increasing demand for lifestyle properties in the South West.
“People are increasingly moving to these areas because they can work from home and only occasionally have to commute to work in the city or a major regional centre.”
Nu Wealth predicts that with petrol prices now surging in WA, the demand for lifestyle properties from people who want to cut fuel costs by working from home will rise even further.
“This is because driving remains the dominant method of travel to work in Australia, with 69 per cent of the working population – over 6.5 million people – commuting by car,” Mr McQuillan said.
“The financial impact of rising petrol prices on the family budget is underlined by the most recent research from Finder’s Consumer Sentiment Tracker, which reveals that the number of Australians who rate petrol as one of the expenses that cause them the most stress has reached its highest level on record.
“In March 2022, one in four Australians (25 per cent) said petrol was now one of their most stressful costs, up from 17 per cent in January this year. This has more than doubled since the same time last year – 11 per cent in March 2021.
“It is a financial reality that many more Western Australians will now consider working from home to cut fuel prices, increasing the number of people who work from home even higher.”
