Although the current situation has largely impacted many industries badly, the property market has remained mostly afloat. Other than Melbourne, the property market in major cities is restabilising quickly.

The situation in Melbourne is completely different to the rest of Australia, where the inability to conduct inspections has prevented a restabilization in the property market. This means that there is little to no buying or selling taking place in Victoria. Contrastingly, house prices in the other major cities have only decreased by 2.5% since their peak in April, which demonstrates that the Australian housing market has dealt with the pandemic better than other industries.

So why invest in the property market right now? At the moment, term deposit rates are significantly low (below 1%), so keeping your money there is inefficient. On the other hand, mortgage rates are at an all-time low (around 2.5%). Therefore, this is already a great time to take advantage of the mortgage rates. On top of that, the estimated gross rental yields on apartments for all the major cities (including Melbourne), are 3.4% (Sydney) or higher. Essentially, this means that now more than ever positive gearing is highly likely i.e. rental payments acquired from a given property will be higher than the loan repayments you have to make.

Whether the Reserve Bank is at fault by focusing on fiscal policy changes rather than ones which will prove beneficial in the long term will become clearer with time. Till then, best to capitalise on the few advantages provided by the unique situation we are in.