Barry Wheeler

Craig, there wasn't a huge difference than has been with a minor swing over the last few weeks.

And that has just been in, I suppose, running with the other states.

What we did have was a lot more conversations around what that announcements from the RBA and the subsequent rate increases from the banks might mean for Australia.

different demographics in the market.

So whether first home buyers or sellers and so on, we're still seeing a strong demand for good quality homes that are priced correctly here on the ground.

And we didn't see a huge difference from this weekend just gone than the weekend prior, other than a few extra conversations on the ground.

Yeah absolutely we are seeing a lot more inquiry probably this year than what we did late last year from first home buyers and a lot of them are very curious being that they've not been in the market and potentially haven't had that much experience with banks either curious as to what these rate increases might mean for them and moving forward in securing their first home.

Yeah, so Craig, that would be fairly accurate from my observations on the ground and research, of course.

I spoke to what we call a bit of a ripple effect a few years ago as the central suburbs of Hobart started peaking or at least rapidly increasing pre-COVID.

We started seeing the more affordable suburbs on the fringes becoming a lot more popular and that's certainly with the exponential increases post-COVID.

say mid-2020, we've certainly seen a dramatic increase in the popularity of those areas due to their affordability.

Yeah, look, it's probably not.

I mean, I wouldn't have predicted it to be that low.

I might have predicted it to be a little bit higher than that.

But hearing it and really drilling down into the figures, it's probably not as surprising as what it might be.

We have seen, as I say, exponential increases in the housing prices down here.

And certainly, the research would suggest that the average wages in Hobart are slightly below

some of those in the other states as well.

So probably not surprising, although I certainly would have predicted it that it was there.

It's a hard squeeze to get into the market anywhere under half a mil these days.