Loading 
Bonanza Offer FLAT 20% off & $20 sign up bonus Order Now
RES310
AU
The University Of Sydney
COVID-19 pandemic did not spare a single country or region in the world and this includes New South Wales, Australia. The rise in the COVID-19 cases led to restrictions and lockdowns, which affected the economic and social conditions with the majority of the people having reduced income (Han et al., 2020). Thus, the purchasing power of the people is severely affected. In this regard, it is interesting to understand whether the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced property prices in New South Wales, Australia. This is because property prices have rarely fallen in the past and the present pandemic has reduced the affordability of the people as well as the demand for real estate (Ullah, & Sepasgozar, 2020). Contradictorily, another aspect that makes the research interesting is that the COVID-19 pandemic with a reduced supply of goods and services has led to the rise in the inflation rate (Guerrieri, Lorenzoni, Straub, & Werning, 2020). Similarly, it is a scope to find if the lockdowns that restricted construction works have caused a rise in property prices or not.
The main purpose of this research is to find how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected property prices in New South Wales, Australia. Considering this purpose statement, some of the aspects are identified, which involve the identification of the specific factors concerning the COVID-19 pandemic that affected the prices of property in New South Wales as well as the related challenges, which the industry face. It also involves the identification of the ways through which the issues or challenges can be addressed.
There have been varied researches on the real estate industry focusing on its issues, challenges, scopes, and trends among others. On the other side, there have been extensive researches concerning COVID-19 showing its wide range of impacts, yet no research is evident concerning its effects on real estate. This is especially concerning New South Wales, Australia, which reflects the major gap in the research field.
The limitations have been that the factors, challenges, and issues relating to the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the New South Wales real estate industry are only considered, and the rest are ignored so that the research is completely focused. The limitation has also been that the primary data collected are only from New South Wales so that irrelevant information can be ignored. On the other side, the scope of the research has been to provide a foundation so that future researchers can gain relevant understanding while conducting a similar study in other regions. The scope is also to address the identified research gap.
The primary data in this research have been gathered from 50 employees through a questionnaire survey along with interviews with five managers of the real estate industry. The questionnaire survey involved close-ended questions (see appendix) to gather information from a large number of participants easily, while the interview questions are open-ended questions (see appendix) to collect detailed information from the specialist managers. The information from the questionnaire survey is presented and analysed through graphs and charts, which are further explained and justified from the interview responses and secondary data.
The first question (see appendix), which has been asked to the 50 employee participants has been to find if the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the prices of property in New South Wales, Australia. In this regard, 34 respondents accounting for 68% of all of them have agreed upon the prevalence of some form of impact, while the remaining 32% could not find any notable difference. Besides, 60% of them agreed about the fall in price, and out of them, 18% stated it to be high and the rest 32% opined it to be at the moderate level. There was no individual employee, who claimed about the high rise in price, but only 8% of them asserted about the hike at a moderate level (refer to figure 1). Besides, the responses from the manager participants explained that certainly, the rate at which the property prices have increased over the years in the urban regions of New South Wales did not happen in 2020. Some of the already built properties were sold at lower prices because of the fear that the prices may fall further and they do not want to hold the same because of the higher liabilities. The prices are also expected to improve or recover in 2021 and thereafter due to the vaccination and overcoming of the pandemic (Allen-Coghlan & McQuinn, 2020; Del Giudice, De Paola, & Del Giudice, 2020; Tanrıvermiş, 2020).
The second question (see appendix) asked to the participants is to find the factors concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the prices of property in New South Wales as well as determine the extent to which the participants agree or disagree with those factors. In this regard, the factors considered are ‘reduced income’, ‘reduced construction projects’, ‘uncertainty in the overall situation’, and ‘reduced scope to shift to new locality’. The responses from the employee participants suggested that the majority of them either agreed or strongly agreed to the mentioned four factors affecting the prices of property in New South Wales. However, among them, 68% either agreed or strongly agreed to the factors namely ‘reduced income’ and ‘uncertainty in the overall situation’, while 60% of them strongly agreed or agreed on ‘reduced scope to shift to new locality’ as well as 50% on ‘reduced construction projects’. The manager participants explained that the majority of the employed people during the peak pandemic lost their jobs and the business individuals faced a fall in the demand for goods and services, which led to the lowering of income. There was uncertainty in the situation, as the US and the European nations were highly affected and people thought such circumstances might emerge in Australia, thus they developed an extensive tendency to save money. Many of them were unwilling to purchase a new house then, while others wanted to purchase at lower rates, which reduced the prices (Baker, Farrokhnia, Meyer, Pagel, & Yannelis, 2020; Nicola et al., 2020).
Moreover, the neutral or cannot say opinion is majorly notable concerning the factor ‘reduced construction projects’ (24%), which is followed by ‘reduced scope to shift to new locality’(20%) along with ‘reduced income’ (16%) and ‘uncertainty in the overall situation’ (16%). Besides, the participants disagreeing or strongly disagreeing have been mostly in the case of ‘reduced construction projects’ (26%), which is followed by ‘reduced scope to shift to new locality’ (20%) as well as ‘uncertainty in the overall situation’ (16%) and ‘reduced income’ (16%) (Refer figure 2). The managers explained that such a result has been obtained because many of the employees are unaware of actual data if there is a fall in the construction works and there are prospective buyers who want to shift to a new desired locality (Whittle, & Diaz-Artiles, 2020).
The employee participants were also asked to mention the challenges that the real estate industry in New South Wales faced during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the extent to which they agree or disagree these to be a concern (see appendix). In this regard, the challenges are ‘reduced number of buyers’, ‘buyers not willing to pay higher prices’, ‘lack of workers and employees due to lockdown’, ‘involvement of COVID guidelines that increased costs’, and ‘migrants are leaving the urban cities’. The majority of the respondents strongly agreed or agreed with each of the stated challenges. Specifically, 64% of the participants strongly agreed or agreed on ‘reduced number of buyers’ as the challenge, which is followed by ‘involvement of COVID guidelines that increased costs’ (60%), ‘buyers not willing to pay higher prices’ (58%), ‘migrants are leaving the urban cities’ (56%), and ‘lack of workers and employees due to lockdown’ (54%). The managers in the interview justified and explained the response of the employees by stating that the lack of income due to the job loss and reduced profit of the business in the COVID crisis has lowered the purchasing power and affordability of property buyers. Many of them have also postponed their purchase, while the projects were already been completed. The challenge has been that the companies were not receiving adequate revenue to meet the liabilities. Herein, the increased cost of following COVID guidelines is also a major challenge and liability for which the industry was not prepared (Ray et al., 2020; Shafi, Liu & Ren, 2020).
Moreover, cannot say or neutral response has been mostly concerning ‘lack of workers and employees due to lockdown’ (24%) and ‘migrants are leaving the urban cities’ (24%), which is followed by ‘involvement of COVID guidelines that increased costs’ (22%),‘buyers not willing to pay higher prices’ (20%), and ‘reduced number of buyers’(18%). Furthermore, strongly disagree or disagree response has been found mostly related to ‘lack of workers and employees due to lockdown’ (28%), which is followed by ‘migrants are leaving the urban cities’ (24%), ‘buyers not willing to pay higher prices’ (22%), ‘reduced number of buyer’(20%), and ‘involvement of COVID guidelines that increased costs’ (18%) (Refer figure 3). The reason behind such responses is explained by the managers, who stated that most of the workers and employees are willing to continue their job by staying in the cities (Das, 2020).
The fourth and final question (see appendix) that has been asked to the employee participants is to provide recommendations so that the issues or challenges of the real estate industry in New South Wales can be addressed as well as the extent to which they agree or disagree with those suggestions. The recommendations herein are ‘attract buyers through promotion’, ‘provide buyers with easy access to loan facilities’, ‘provide free lodging and food facilities to migrant workers’, ‘follow COVID guidelines strategically’, and ‘conduct innovation’. The majority of the respondents concerning all the recommendations either agreed or strongly agreed, which is especially notable in the case of ‘conduct innovation’ (66%). This is followed by ‘follow COVID guidelines strategically’ (64%), ‘attract buyers through promotion’ (62%), ‘provide free lodging and food facilities to migrant workers’ (52%) and ‘provide buyers with easy access to loan facilities’(48%). The managers also explained the same by stating that the conduct and integration of innovation would lead to reduced cost as well as improved efficiency and quality of work. Besides, the COVID-19 guidelines need to be strategically aligned with the existing operational process and the employees must be trained for the same (Lee, & Trimi, 2021; Wang, Hong, Li, & Gao, 2020).
On the other side, cannot say/neutral reply has been predominantly notable concerning recommendations such as ‘provide buyers with easy access to loan facilities’(24%), followed by ‘follow COVID guidelines strategically’ (22%) along with 9% for each of ‘attract buyers through promotion’, ‘provide free lodging and food facilities to migrant workers’, and ‘conduct innovation’. The disagreed or strongly disagreed opinions have been most evident concerning the recommendations such as ‘provide free lodging and food facilities to migrant workers’ (30%). This is followed by ‘provide buyers with easy access to loan facilities’(28%), ‘attract buyers through promotion’ (20%), ‘conduct innovation’ (16%), and ‘follow COVID guidelines strategically’ (14%) (Refer figure 3). Furthermore, the managers said that the workers and employees are still willing to work with the organisation; thus, providing free lodging and food facilities would not significantly benefit the company to overcome the present issue. The managers also said that it is not financially feasible for all the companies to offer loans to the buyers unless a third party finances it (Hassan, 2020).
Based on the overall discussion, it is apparent that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected property prices in New South Wales, Australia with reduced rates. This is mainly because of the lowered income of the people and ambiguity in the overall situation as well as the decrease in the number of construction projects and limited scope among people to shift to a new area. On the other side, the companies also face issues and challenges such as the reduced number of buyers and not being interested to pay higher prices because of their lower income. The challenge has also been posed by the additional costs due to the involvement of COVID guidelines. As a result, the workers and employees are unable to work because of lockdown, while the migrant workers and buyers are leaving the urban cities. Nevertheless, these issues can be addressed with innovation to reduce cost and improve quality alongside strategically following the COVID guidelines. Another recommendation is to attract prospective buyers through promotion and provide them with loan facilities as well as offer lodging facilities to migrant workers.
Allen-Coghlan, M., & McQuinn, K. (2020). Property prices and COVID-19 related administrative closures: What are the implications? Sydney: ESRI.
Baker, S. R., Farrokhnia, R. A., Meyer, S., Pagel, M., & Yannelis, C. (2020). How does household spending respond to an epidemic? Consumption during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, 10(4), 834-862.
Das, D. (2020). Regional disparities of growth and internal migrant workers in informal sectors in the age of COVIDâ€19. Journal of Public Affairs, 20(4), 1-6.
Del Giudice, V., De Paola, P., & Del Giudice, F. P. (2020). COVID-19 infects real estate markets: Short and mid-run effects on housing prices in Campania region (Italy). Social Sciences, 9(114), 1-18.
Han, E., Tan, M. M. J., Turk, E., Sridhar, D., Leung, G. M., Shibuya, K., ... & Legido-Quigley, H. (2020). Lessons learnt from easing COVID-19 restrictions: an analysis of countries and regions in Asia Pacific and Europe. The Lancet, 396, 1525-1534.
Hassan, A. A. (2020). Determinants of consumer behavior on choice of real estate industry in Nairobi County in Kenya. United States International University-Africa, 1-72.
Lee, S. M., & Trimi, S. (2021). Convergence innovation in the digital age and in the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Journal of Business Research, 123, 14-22.
Nicola, M., Alsafi, Z., Sohrabi, C., Kerwan, A., Al-Jabir, A., Iosifidis, C., ... & Agha, R. (2020). The socio-economic implications of the coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic: A review. International Journal Of Surgery, 185-193.
Ray, D., Salvatore, M., Bhattacharyya, R., Wang, L., Du, J., Mohammed, S., ... & Mukherjee, B. (2020). Predictions, role of interventions and effects of a historic national lockdown in India’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic: data science call to arms. Harvard Data Science Review, 2020(Suppl 1), 1-45.
Shafi, M., Liu, J., & Ren, W. (2020). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on micro, small, and medium-sized Enterprises operating in Pakistan. Research in Globalization, 2, 100018.
Tanrıvermiş, H. (2020). Possible impacts of COVID-19 outbreak on real estate sector and possible changes to adopt: A situation analysis and general assessment on Turkish perspective. Journal of Urban Management, 9(3), 263-269.
Ullah, F., & Sepasgozar, S. M. (2020). Key factors influencing purchase or rent decisions in smart real estate investments: A system dynamics approach using online forum thread data. Sustainability, 12(4832), 1-36.
Wang, Y., Hong, A., Li, X., & Gao, J. (2020). Marketing innovations during a global crisis: A study of China firms’ response to COVID-19. Journal of Business Research, 116, 214-220.
Whittle, R. S., & Diaz-Artiles, A. (2020). An ecological study of socioeconomic predictors in detection of COVID-19 cases across neighborhoods in New York City. BMC Medicine, 18(1), 1-17.
Do you wish you could receive law assignment help from top lawyers in the country? Now you can hire only the best industry professionals on Myassignmenthelp.co.uk. In addition, our experts provide you with in-depth dissertation help to overcome the usual hassles of writing assignments.
Additionally, you can find managers from reputable companies going out of their way to provide reliable management assignment help. Their guidance is crucial when preparing for examinations and writing research papers. Hence, whenever you wonder, "Can't someone do my assignment in the UK?” don’t settle for anything less than the best academic stalwarts on Myassignmenthelp.co.uk.
Upload your Assignment and improve Your Grade
Boost Grades
