News Archive - 2020

Market News -  January to March 2020

 

With real property markets starting to tick along nicely after a flat 2019, not withstanding the RBA assistance via with a couple of well timed interest rate reductions to the cash rate in the previous months, all looked primed for a major upswing in real property markets across the country, alas the best laid plans of mice and men .....

 

After a summer of lethal bushfires, followed by the almost unthinkable, a raft of massive flooding, we were all completely stunned. Several weeks later, just after we were had clearing our heads of the this carnage, along came COVID 19.

 

Suffice to say, what little business was being consider in late February, early March 2020, was quickly put on the back-burner for later in the year as we all knew that the COVID threat was going to be a 3 - 6 month event at the very least.

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All in all there is nothing really positive to report in this quarter, perhaps other than the outstanding performance of local and overseas stock markets which reached new highs in very early March, just before COVID 19 introduced itself, so lets just leave it that new business resumes again in the second quarter before we all go out of business. Roll on Quarter 2.

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Market News -  April to June 2020

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During Quarter 2, 2020, Viking Capital remained open for trading and suffered no real drag down from the COVID-19 situation. 

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During this period however, a lot of our property development clients were pretty confused, and were unsure as to what level of downwards momentum the property market might experience from the pandemic and our general observation was that the majority of them decided to keep their 'powder dry' and sit on current projects to for few months in order to see what would ultimately pan out. 

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However as at June 30, 2020, and mainly due to the Federal Government's financial stimulus programs, the property market only suffered fairly minor damage with valuations in some pockets of Sydney and Melbourne coming off the boil, and in other less fashionable locations, property values were probably overly exaggerated anyway, but most importantly, property valuations for properties located in regional and rural areas actually increased.

 

On the other side of the coin, global share-markets rapidly recovered from a huge scare in mid March when major international company stock prices plummeted back from record highs, to only small declines by the end of the Quarter.    

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Market News -  July to September 2020  

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With COVID in full swing across the states of Australia and also abroad I think it would be fair to say that any real investor confidence in the various global investment markets remained low in this quarter, save for some sectors of the stock markets in where certain companies clearly benefitted from the vast sways of the population working from home, notwithstanding that other sectors were hammered, such as the travel, airlines and accommodation sectors. 

 

Notwithstanding this general lack of confidence, and taking into account the emerging trends in population behaviors due to COVID-19, 'rock bottom' interest rates continued to prevail, even though the major of the major property markets such as Sydney and Melbourne remained slightly subdued, albeit that some growth shoots for property markets became evident during this period, particularly the property markets in some of the more populated regional areas which became of greater interest to likely buyers due to the issues around the COVID-19 phenomenon, which made residing in higher population areas less attractive. 

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Market News -  October to December 2020  

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With the COVID-19 problem still unresolved markets remained generally in suspended animation, except for the NASDAQ which grew in capital value quite substantially throughout this period in support of most of the major Technology Stocks.

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Again the majority of property investors, builders and property developers all 'sat on their hands' as well as their wallets through this quarter due to continuing unease caused by other market factors including the COVID-19 Pandemic.

 

In fact the majority of investors we spoke to had clearly decided to wait  it out until after Christmas and into the new year before actually looking to do anything substantial, so as we at Viking Capital Group were not particularly busy, we used this time productively, and caught up on some important industry training programs, re-located and established new inner-Brisbane offices and added on some new lending accreditations to our long list of 'go-to' loan providers, including several new second tier Banks, several new Institutional Lending Houses and a couple of Sydney based Fund Managers.

 

 Let us all hope for a better and more prosperous 2021!

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