WARNING: Australia’s Building Crisis Is Getting Worse

George Markoski Hello and welcome to the Positive Property Show. I’ve got Adam Albright here with me. Adam, how are you? Adam Albright Good evening. Happy Easter Thursday, everybody. Hope we’re doing well out there in the world. George Markoski Yep, we’re going to do an Easter special. I’m not going to wear bunny ears or anything like that. But what I will talk about first is before we start, because we’re going to go through a lot of stats. So get your notepads out and your pens because this is important. I want to give you the stats behind the headlines and the truth of what’s going on. Because at the moment there’s a lot of fear out there. And I noticed it firsthand just before I flew out back to Bali the other week, I was actually at the petrol station filling up the car and something hit me. I was sitting there and I was filling up the tank and it got to 120, 140, 160. And I wince like most Australians would, are wincing at the moment at the petrol station. George Markoski But then something else hit me even harder. I saw this guy, probably late 20s, and he parked this car and just finished filling his tank. And he had a baby seat, one of those baby seats that faces backwards, got the little things hanging on it. And he looked at the baby seat and I saw the look in his eyes thinking. And I was thinking to myself, I’m going to be that guy soon. Because that’s why it really hit me. And I was looking at that guy, he looked worried, right? And in eight weeks, as you know, me and Christina are about to have our first child. But fingers crossed, everything else like that. And I was thinking, you know what, I’ve been doing this for a long time, you know, investing in property and the money and the wealth is great. George Markoski But what’s more important is the reason on why you’re doing this, right? And I sort of dug down thinking, you know, I’m building a life for my future child so he can have a better life than me and really start well, it’s all about legacy, right? Because that’s the real reason to do this. And at the moment there’s a lot of headlines, there’s a lot of fear and consumer confidence is down in the 50-year low. So it’s down a lot. And I’ve seen this movie play over and I know the ending. You know, when you’ve seen a formula in a movie play, you know the ending already. But kids watch it, they don’t know, they’re all excited, you know, is the superhero going to win? Is he not going to win? But we all know the superhero is going to win every time. George Markoski Correct. Adam Albright That’s why they have. George Markoski Yeah, exactly. And the people that aren’t investors and haven’t invested for a long time, they don’t know how this whole crisis is going to end with the property market or investing. But I do, because I’ve seen this movie play over and over. I saw it in 2008 with the GFC, I saw it during COVID and I’ve seen this happen over and over again. The fact of it is what happens now? And I understand that people are freezing. The property markets actually dipped, it’s had a little bounce downwards and people are scared. There’s people that are trying to sell their investment properties, people that have stopped buying investment properties. I’ve seen this happen many times and people are freezing and not sure what to do. Now the thing is those people that are freezing, they’re in for a shock because they think the world’s falling apart. George Markoski But in five years’ time we’re going to forget there was an oil crisis, the petrol will be back to normal, everything back to normal. And people that bought a property in 2026, they’ll still have that property in the growth and people that didn’t buy it, they’re going to have nothing tangible, you know what I mean? And Easter is about resurrection and about a new start. There’s probably a lot of people out there that are scared, but I’m saying go with the theme and resurrect. That’s the thing. Now I’ve got myself a mega pint of wine. I’ve been watching the Amber and Johnny, have you seen that on Netflix, the documentary about Amber Heard and Johnny Depp? Adam Albright No. George Markoski Oh, it’s a really good doco. It’s about them going to court and There’s a video of him filling up this massive pint of wine in the morning and it was looking bad for him, but he just comes out and says, oh, mega pint. and just turned it around to make it something fun. Only Johnny Depp could do that. You know what I mean? Adam Albright That’s, that’s good. Well, what’s the fuel price like in Bali? Are you guys getting hit with the same sort of. George Markoski No, not hardly any increase at all. It’s a lot cheaper to get fuel in Bali than it is in Australia. And this is the thing. Australia produces petroleum, right. Like it’s embarrassing that other countries are doing better than us and just Indonesia is actually not very good at having a lot of stores or supplies. So I don’t know what’s happening there, but what I’m going to do is I’m going to go through the state of the nation and go through some stats because I want to talk about what’s happening in builders, what’s happening in supply and what’s happening in oil, because I did a post recently about oil and my thoughts on the matter. So let’s go through the numbers. Adam, the truth about Australia’s building crisis that no one is talking about. Yes, I got it. Adam Albright Right, got it. George Markoski So consumer confidence has hit a 50-year low. So Australians are pulling back hard. Confidence has collapsed. Levels not seen over five decades. Right. When sentiment breaks like this, spending, borrowing and housing demand follow. It’s not just sentiment, but it’s financial stress. So Australians feel worse about their money in the economy at the same time. So both measures now at the lowest levels on record. This is when people stop spending, delay decisions and pull back completely. Mortgage holders are getting hit hardest. Confidence has dropped across all groups, but mortgage holders are leading decline because they’ve got financial pressure. Adam Albright Well, interest rates haven’t gone up too much yet. George Markoski No, they haven’t. They haven’t. And this is what I’ll talk about next. Funny enough, you pre-framed it, which is amazing. The RBA has actually called a Catch-22 on interest rates. You know what Catch-22 is, don’t you? There’s a book, Catch-22 about this guy who he’s trying to get out of serving the army and he’s always got a Catch-22, which is you do one thing, then you end up a different problem. You do nothing and you get another different problem. You know that one? Yeah, it’s a famous book. And see, I don’t know about the. Adam Albright Book, but the saying. George Markoski Yeah, but saying, you know the saying, so normally collapse in confidence, right, would force rate cuts to support the economy. So you get confidence going down the lowest it’s been in 50 years. What does the RBA do? We lower interest rates and get people moving. It’s the fuel to get things moving. Adam Albright It’s what they did over COVID, too. George Markoski That’s right. But the inflation expectations are now surging to their highest levels in years. So the problem is they’re thinking, cut too early, inflation spikes hold too long, and households break. What do we do? I know what I want to do. I want to cut rates. I wish I had power of that knob and I’d cut the rates down. You know what I mean? Putting rates up ain’t gonna help things. So the markets expect rates to stay high for longer. So they don’t believe the rate cuts are coming, and they’re actually pricing in higher rate hikes after you look at this graph, and they’re predicting the rates are gonna go up even higher. But you can see where they’re at, right? It’s not too bad. But compared to you look at 2007, rates were right up to nearly 7.5%. That was huge. George Markoski Well, the worst rates we had was in the 80s when they were like 18%, 19%. That was just crazy. So basically, what does high for longer actually mean? Well, it means that they’re going to spend more money, right? But look at this. Repayments, on average loan are going to rise by $600 a month on a $763,000 loan. $600 a month. Now, that’s a lot of money, but it’s affordable. It’s not like what happened in the 80s. In the 80s, it was ridiculous. Some people paying 24% interest, which is a quarter of what you borrowed. Imagine 24% interest. Adam Albright Yeah. You couldn’t do it, could you? Not this day and age, no. George Markoski But back in those days, they did that, and people still got through. But the market’s now questioning about further hikes. And now it’s a 50/50 bet. This is my bet, Adam. I bet they ain’t going to go up because if they did go up, the RBA would be the stupidest people in the world. However, are they the stupidest people in the world? Well, I’d say this in public. Do I have to keep time? Adam Albright Time will tell. George Markoski Well, they’ve proven to me time after time that usually their moves are bad. Now, what they did during COVID was good, dropping the rates, but I feel even then they went a bit too hard and fast instead of slow and Steady. Because if you slow down on your rate cutting and your rate ramping, it just keeps things a little bit smoother. Adam Albright So you don’t think interest rates will go up anymore? George Markoski I don’t, I don’t. At the moment the market is saying 50/50. Adam Albright Yeah. George Markoski What? I’d love to see if there’s a Polymarket bet on this and maybe I should set one up. I don’t know if you heard of Polymarket. Adam Albright Yes, you’ve told me about. You’ve invested in it. George Markoski Yeah. It’s the biggest prediction market in the world and they predicted so many things. I should probably look it up in Polymarket. So fewer hikes expected but rates stay high. The market’s dialed back expectations but the peak rate is still high, not coming down anytime soon. That’s what they’re saying. I think that if this all this thing happens for much longer, they’re going to have to come in and cut rates. Especially with 50-year market sentiment being what it is. What are your thoughts, Adam? Adam Albright You know, I agree, but I just can’t see. You know, I filled up my car, it was $209, $204 for a tank of fuel, tank of diesel. That’s just $200. That’s a lot of money. George Markoski For a tank of diesel, that’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of money. Adam Albright So how can you afford mortgages and everything else? George Markoski Yeah. And petrol is going to affect everything else. Yeah. But this is the thing. The biggest tightening isn’t coming from the economy, it’s coming from policy response. So central banks are reacting too aggressively and amplifying the slowdown. And this is the problem. Right. It’s the policy of central banks and what they’re doing at the moment. Look at this letter here by the Reece Group. You’ve probably seen it. Adam. Adam Albright Yeah, I’m going to read it. George Markoski You got the email. Exactly. Going to read it out. 20th of March 2026. This is a letter from Reece Group and they’ve sent it out to all people they supply to. Important update plastic pipe and fitting pricing. We want to give our valued customers as much notice as possible about upcoming price changes affecting plastic pipe and fittings driven by the conflict in the Middle East. From 18 April, prices from our plastic pipe and fitting suppliers will increase across the following categories. HDPE pipe and fittings up 36%. Twin wall corrugated stormwater pipe and fittings up to 31%. PVC piping fittings up 28.5%. Now you’re going to explain all this because I don’t know what the hell half of this is. George Markoski Our industry is suffering from a lack of supply of raw material, fuel and freight options, which is driving costs upwards, adding immense pressure across the market. The degree of pricing volatility we are currently experiencing in our plastics category is highly unusual. The trading environment remains very much uncertain. Our suppliers also advised that any product not delivered by the 18 April will be priced at the updated rates as they take delivery of raw materials at their new cost base. We know that increases like this have a real impact on your business, although we’re committed to keeping you informed with regular updates. As always, your branch team is here if you have any questions. Adam Albright So in addition to that, they’re also adding anywhere between $50 to $100 per delivery surcharge almost across the board for all delivery businesses because of diesel costs? George Markoski Yeah. Adam Albright 28% on PVC pipe? Yeah, there’s only seven or $8,000 worth of pipe, but you add 28 to that and then you add every other building material as well. That’s increasing build costs. George Markoski That’s right. And the fact of it is, I mean, when have we seen build costss go back down after they put it up? Adam Albright No, I don’t think I’ve seen it. George Markoski It doesn’t happen. It’s annoying, but that doesn’t happen. So what happens is build costss go up, there’s a new price and then things stabilize, but we stick at the old price, we never go down again. And this is the issue because the fact of it is, regardless of market sentiment, usually what happens is when you’ve got the lowest market sentiment 50 years, that’s going to drive property prices down. That’s the fact that it’s a very strong pusher of property prices is sentimental sentiment makes a big difference. However, you can push as much as you want, you cannot change the real facts and figures on the ground. Does that make sense? Adam Albright Yes. George Markoski Market sentiment can’t reduce this increase because it’s there. Adam Albright But also, and builders can’t absorb these sort of costs when they’ve quoted their project or quoted your house, they can’t absorb these costs. These are costs that are coming through at the last minute. George Markoski Yep. And what do you think is going to happen to the construction industry? What’s going to happen to builders? Adam Albright The price is going to have to go up. So I spoke to a few mates in the industry and if you’re a sort of a one to two sort of houses, you probably could again, good margin, so you could probably afford to absorb it. But if you’re one of the biggest scale builders who are doing 250 to 750 homes a year, you add, say, $10,000 a house or more. It’s just going to send your profit. Yeah, exactly. You’re just going to send your company into bankruptcy. So you have to be very careful how everyone attacks this. George Markoski Well, the problem is, I suppose at the end of the day, builders compete with each other. And what they do is they build more, get less margin to make more profit, and they’re also buying on scale. Adam Albright So instead of buying one or, you know, four taps for a house, they’re buying 400 taps. So reduces your price. And then when those 400 taps go up, that’s when you’re like, oh, your margin. George Markoski Exactly, exactly. So what are the smart builders doing now? Adam Albright Well, we did. I did have a good question, actually. I spoke to two of the development townhouses. They’ve put orders in and paid for it out of their own money. So to lock in prices for the projects for the next sort of 6 to 12 months, they’ve gone bulk buying. So they’re lucky enough to have either the cash or the facility to be able to hold those pipes or bricks or whatever they’ve ordered. But they’re buying up now. Buying up large at that older price. George Markoski Yeah. Well, I know one of your contacts, he bought a whole steel from New Zealand. Adam Albright Yeah, no, that was. That was g. From China. George Markoski Yes, from China. And he bought. Buddy, how much did he buy? Like, he bought. Adam Albright Oh, tons. And so he ended up building his own steel-making facility. George Markoski That’s thinking outside the square. He’s like, with timber. Adam Albright With timber was too expensive. Couldn’t get the labor. Was too expensive. So he got his own machine and now he makes his own steel frames on the side. George Markoski He’s like the Elon Musk of building companies in Australia. You know what I mean? Adam Albright I just think about things and like, well, I can buy it from here and get the warranty added to it. George Markoski Yeah. So the fact of it is, during COVID we had more construction companies and builders go broke in the entire history of Australia. Adam Albright It’s still happening. The ripple effect is still coming through to this day. George Markoski That’s what I’m saying. So they got destroyed. And what happened was we just don’t have enough companies to build properties in Australia. And now we’ve been hit again. It’s almost like Darwinian evolution and only the strongest survive. But the fact of it is, sometimes it’s the lucky to survive because the fact of it is, we had Some very big companies that were very profitable that went on huge. What was the biggest company? How big was that? Adam Albright Yeah, you’re going to ask me that. I’m trying to think of the name. But yeah, they were large. George Markoski It was a metricom cancel. Adam Albright Metricon was very close at one stage. George Markoski But they canceled all their contracts though. Adam Albright They canceled contracts? Yeah. George Markoski Think about this. They had billions of dollars worth profit and they canceled everything because it was going to become a big loss. You imagine that’s what we have to. Adam Albright Be careful of this time around, like with the government has to be very careful that we don’t send all these builders who have signed fixed price contracts. Send them, send them to the wall because then you’re going to get half a heap of half-finished jobs. People aren’t going to get their houses built and then all the suppliers aren’t going to get, you know, all your tradies and all. They’re not going to get paid either. George Markoski No, no, exactly. The ripple effect. So there’s a real big concern that there’s going to be a lot more builders going broke again. Another batch. Adam Albright Yeah. George Markoski There’s going to be others that die off. The fact of it is there’s going to be a lot of builders and construction companies that are not going to survive this. Adam Albright But I think it’s going to be a lot of the industries, like transport industries. I just think it’s going to, this is going to happen across the board. This is not just focused at construction. George Markoski I agree. I mean you think about if you own a taxi business. Adam Albright Yeah, yeah. George Markoski I mean suddenly now every trip is not a profit anymore unless you change. And I don’t think they can change prices without getting the government to talk about it. Like it’s quite regulated. Adam Albright Yeah. George Markoski But I’d imagine with the price at the moment, if you catch a taxi, they’ll be losing money every time you ride with them. Adam Albright Yeah. And well, I don’t know about Ubers and all them. I don’t know if those prices have gone up, but the people who are driving aren’t going to make as much either. So I’ve got a mate of mine who owns a transport company. He normally spends $150,000 a month on diesel. From this month has been $300,000. George Markoski Yeah, he’s. Adam Albright He normally sends 12 to 15 trucks to Perth a week and now he’s only sending four because he can’t get diesel to get back. So this is going to cripple a lot of businesses out there. George Markoski Yeah. And look the thing is, during COVID the government came in, they reduced rates, they helped business and got everyone through it. Not only that, they actually made Australians the richest people in the world after. Right. That’s what the government did. The government kicked ass. They really did well. And I’m normally, you know me, I’m all normally against all governments because I hate them because they do a shit job. But the Morrison government actually did really well and got us through COVID, better off than we started. And compared to a lot of other countries that were destroyed, our economy actually thrived and got better. And what they did is they protected business with the what was it called when they did the whole COVID thing? Adam Albright They were giving us all grants, like giving $20,000, $5,000 here. There you go. 20. George Markoski Yeah. No, no, but because what happened was they retained the people. So what happened was they had payments so you could keep all your staff. Adam Albright Yes. George Markoski So therefore, once COVID finished Jobkeeper, that was it. Jobkeeper was a genius idea. And the reason being is, as a business, one of your biggest assets, your staff, and if you lose your staff, they go on unemployment anyway. The government gives them money anyway, but they’re not part of your staff anymore. You’ve got to start from scratch and build your team out, which takes years. And the government did a great job, kept everyone in their job, everyone got money. And then as soon as COVID finished, everyone got back into it and Australia’s economy caught up really quick. So I want to talk to our current government. Please learn from what we did during COVID and do something similar, because you look at what happened during GFC, right? So during GFC, our government, pathetic. George Markoski What they did is they sent a $2,000 cheque to all the people that were lower income, and then these people bought fucking big TVs. Adam Albright TVs? George Markoski Yeah. Adam Albright Wasn’t that called big TVs name? It’s something about the TV flat-screen. George Markoski The economy. The economy tanked, right? And it was really Harvey Norman, China and South Korea. But what I’m saying is they gave money to people that aren’t financially smart with money. The worst people you give money to is people that are poor. Right? People are going to hate this when they hear it, but giving money to poor people is not smart, that they’re poor for a reason. Poor people are poor because they make bad decisions consistently. Because if you make good decisions, you’re not going to be poor anymore. People are going to get the sound bite and I’m going to see it on the Internet. It’s going to be crazy. Adam Albright I don’t know. I’ll leave this one to you for honesty. George Markoski I don’t care. I don’t care because it’s true. And I’m hoping the government now doesn’t give money to just the lower income but actually helps businesses because business is what’s going to get us out of this. And what they need to do is they need to make sure that businesses don’t go broke because we need our businesses. We’ve got a lot of small business and medium sized business Australia and this is the most important thing we can do. There you go. I said my little rant. Adam Albright Let’s just. Yeah, let’s hope the government does do something. Like I didn’t watch Albanese’s speech last night but the feedback I’m getting is absolutely terrible. Like it was a disgusting pre recorded. It wasn’t even a live. George Markoski Yeah, yeah, what I heard. He said, everyone, everything’s normal, don’t worry. Then he said, look, public transport. And look, I, I feel like the government needs to really get a think tank and go, what are we going to do? We need to fix this issue. We need to solve things out because there’s people’s livelihoods at risk here. Adam Albright Yep. George Markoski Right. And we don’t want to go for a recession. Forget that. Want to do something better. Okay, let’s go, let’s continue this presentation. God. I’ve got a bit of a side quest there. Adam Albright Going off sidetrack. George Markoski That’s all right. That’s right. That’s all we’re here to do. Okay. Rental market proves the headaches for tenants in the RBA. Rents dropped for a while. Right. So what happened was we had a dip in rents and now they’ve come back up again. They’re going back up again. So a lot of people see this. You look at 2025, rents dropped and now they’re bouncing back because they had to drop because they went up so high. That’s more about rental growth accelerating across the country. And the thing is, if you go back to that graph. Let’s go back to that graph. Back, back one more. Okay. If you look at this graph, see at the bottom there? 2025. So if you bought a property in 2024, you got these rents going down. George Markoski So you could actually, if you bought one and settled right at the bottom of that peak, your rents would have dropped and you’d see a bit of hardship. But now they’re going up again. That’s the thing. People have to Realize, because I know with rents you want to be at the right part of that graph, but being right part of that graph in your area is just luck. But you’ve got to look at the long term, not short term. Let’s keep going. So rent is now taking a third of household income. So we’ve got rent taking a third of the household income. We’ve got petrol taking the other third. What are we going to do? Adam Albright Yeah, food. Food’s expensive, bills are expensive. Yeah, yeah, I’ve noticed that on my. In particular, the feedback you get for solar. I used to get 8 cents per kilowatt, now they’ve cut it down to 4 cents per kilowatt. George Markoski Of course they have. Adam Albright It’s like, hang on, I signed up for eight and now you’re giving me four. And I’ve seen other companies only giving 2 cents. George Markoski Yeah. Which is nothing. Adam Albright No, it doesn’t even cover the bloody surcharge that I’m paying. To have electricity to the house is like $20 a day or something. And even if I don’t use any electricity for the whole day, I don’t even make a $20 with a. And I’ve got a 10 kilowatt system. It’s. George Markoski Yeah. I mean the government talks about, we want renewables but they don’t reward you for having them. Adam Albright No. George Markoski Now this is the big elephant in the room. Migration is driving rental demand higher. So you look at this graph. Net overseas migration, net permanent and long-term arrivals. So net overseas migration has dipped a bit, as you can see the blue line. But net permanent and long-term arrivals has gone right up. And really it’s the same sort of thing. The net permanent long term arrivals, they haven’t officially migrated, but they’re living in the country and having to live somewhere. Adam Albright Do you know what, how many people are coming in a year at the moment? I don’t know. George Markoski Yes, yes, have a look at this. Okay, have a look at this on the graph at the moment, the blue graph there. You’ve got nearly got the overseas people coming here, but then you got the permanent long term arrivals. That’s nearly 500,000. So we got hundreds of thousands of people a year coming here. We’ve got like in two years you’ve got a whole Adelaide worth of people coming to the country. Adam Albright It’s a lot of people. George Markoski The global gas supply is tightening. So global LNG supply has been disrupted with key supply routes and producers under pressure. Right. So demand across Asia remains strong. Now, you know, one of the biggest gas suppliers in the world is Australia. Adam Albright I was going to say, is it us? Is it? George Markoski Yeah, it’s us. But what do we do? We give it to multinationals and let them take it away. And they do this, all this fancy stuff and pay zero tax. So current policy is risking pushing domestic gas prices much higher if the Iran war keeps going. This is the gas tax. So momentum for a meaningful gas tax or reform is fading fast. Policy is stalling while global energy markets remain volatile despite rising concerns of multinational profits leaving our country. There’s no clear solution is being implemented. So what it does, it leaves Australia exposed to global pricing with no real protection, even though we produce gas. Now. This gets me mad, this gets me angry. You see Mad Max? Adam Albright Yeah. George Markoski This is what’s happening now. There’s a period of scarcity and what’s happening is countries now are stopping exports of fertiliser and oil and gas and hoarding it for themselves. So I think I need to get my leather gear out and get ready for Mad Max. Apparently, Mad Max, everyone’s got leather gear, so every country is looking after itself. Look at global jet fuel exports, right? Countries started to hold on to their own energy supply and exports are being restricted as global availability tightens. Of course, now we depend heavily on imported fuel from other countries. We shouldn’t depend on other countries. Not at all. We’ve got a lake of oil in Queensland that’s bigger than, I don’t know which island it is. It’s humongous. We’ve got so much oil, it’s like. Adam Albright 40 Years worth of oil. George Markoski Apparently we got more than that. That’s at today’s technology, not tomorrow’s technology, right? Adam Albright Just that one dam is enough. George Markoski That’s what I’m saying. It’s crazy. We’ve got oil and gas enough for our whole country. However, we actually pay more for oil and gas than just about anyone and we export it all without getting any tax. And this is our biggest issue in Australia. Literally, that’s our big issue at the moment. Adam Albright We used to do it all in this country back when we, you know, a couple generations ago. We used to make our own tires, we used to make our own cars, we used to do everything. We were self sufficient, basically. Now we’re so heavily reliant on overseas. George Markoski We actually had five tankers. We used to produce oil and petroleum and diesel and everything else. Adam Albright Even bloody pineapple. We import in Audi. They sell pineapple from another country. Like why? I refuse to buy it. George Markoski Look at this. Export restrictions spreading globally. So people are restricting fertiliser, methanol crude, minerals, lng, all this sort of stuff is getting now stopping, going out. Major global suppliers are restricting export to secure their own domestic supply. The other thing is fertiliser, right? China have stopped exporting fertiliser because they need it to grow plants. We need fertiliser. You know what we need to grow food? Fertilizer and diesel and water. Well no, no actually fertiliser and diesel. We’ve got sun and water but without fertiliser and diesel we can’t do anything. We already got the sun. We no one’s covering the sun. Do you get what I’m saying? We need the sun and water we’ve already got here and there’s no limit to that. But the fertiliser and diesel we don’t have and we need that to produce food. George Markoski And there’s a lot of now rural places that have actually run out of diesel and they’re going to miss their planting window. These farms could go broke because you’ve only got a certain window to plant and that’s it. And the plant you need diesel, you need fertiliser. So oil prices have pulled back temporarily but there’s still a big risk. So any relief is likely short lived. A lot of negative news here. Sorry guys, I don’t want to give you negative news but I have to give it to you the way it is. What can I say? I recently posted this about Norway and Australia and the difference, right? And basically Norway, what they did is they taxed all their resources and created a sovereign fund and now it’s worth $2 trillion. You know, and what has Australia done? George Markoski We just gave it all for free, right? So basically I’ve had over 3,000 likes, 2,000 shares. It’s been huge. And I’m just going to read some of the comments here. Well said George, thank you. I can’t clap any louder for this. I wish a lot of people would wake up to what’s happening. People need to do their research. Oh my God. George Markoski. At school we heard these warnings. We heard about all our natural resources and that becoming self sufficient would see us continue being the lucky country, the wealthy country. Spot on. Our politicians haven’t looked after us financially for 30 years. They’re disgrace. Ever since the Australian government decided to commit a move to sell off or renting a resource to international globalists in the 80s was a ticking time bomb. George Markoski Absolutely great video that clearly illustrates what we could achieve if we woke up and demand change. For a political class. This should be a movement, this should be a Wake up call for us. Because with gas and oil going up in value, if we actually taxed our gas, just our gas, we can get $20 billion a year from gas. Imagine we did that to oil, iron ore, copper, gold, everything else. Wouldn’t surprise me if we could hit $50 billion to $100 billion a year and become the richest country in the world. We create a sovereign fund, invest all over the world and then Australians could invest for their future because really our resources are ours and we should be. Once they’re gone. They’re finished. So house price the fall or sellers flood the market. It’s actually already happened. George Markoski Prices have softened up and there’s a little bit of a dip in certain places. But we’ve seen this before. Every time clearance rates fall, price growth slows. It’s a normal part of the property cycle. That’s the fact of it. And Sydney isn’t immune to the cycle either. So clearance rates have dropped to 55%. Which means property prices are dropping in Sydney, also. But Sydney was overpriced anyways. Overcooked. What it looks like is basically a short market slowdown. Clearance rates are falling, listings are rising. Buying demand is weakening. High interest rates are putting pressure on borrowing capacity and sentiment. So this is what a rate driven slowdown looks like. The rates have pushed up and slowed the market down. Adam Albright So it’s done what the RBA wanted to. Wanted it to do. George Markoski Yep, exactly. And we’re going to discuss this further. I just want to go through real people, real results, go through one case study and then we’re going to take questions. Okay. There’s Andrew and Nicole Griffiths from New South Wales. They’ve had $634,000 growth in three years. So what’s that per year? Adam Albright Three. $210,000. George Markoski $210,000. That’s like getting quite a lot of part time jobs to help you, right? Yeah. Right. So they bought with Raceview. So 2023, they bought it for $453,000 and the current value is $720,000. They made $267,000. That’s $89,000 a year or one property. That’s one wage. That’s one person working full time and paying zero tax. Then they’ve got Caboolture $472,000. That current value is now $701,000. Capital growth, $230,000, $115,000 a year in two years. That’s like another wage. Then they got Redbank Plains, settled in 2024, purchased at $572,000. And now it’s worth $710,000 capital growth, $138,000. That’s $69,000 a year. Even the one that didn’t do so well is still amazing. So they’ve literally got a portfolio now worth over $2 million, capital growth over $634,000. Adam Albright The next release of Redbank Plains is going to be $750,000 anyway. So you’re $50,000. You’re $40,000 out on that number. George Markoski I know, I know. This numbers were done. Adam Albright Yeah. But I’m just letting you know that there’s another $40,000 in equity there. George Markoski You can. Adam Albright You’ve got. George Markoski Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Let’s now do our Q A. Okay. This is one thing I want to mention before we go into the Q A is there’s a lot of negative stuff that I talked about tonight, right? Because I want to be real people, and I don’t want to be one of these fake people saying, wow, the world is amazing. Be positive, because you got to see things what they are. What I’m not saying is what you got to do when things are looking tough like this is you need to stick to the fundamentals of investing. I’ve seen this move before, okay? I’ve been investing for over 30 years now, right? George Markoski And the one thing you got to do when you’re investing, you stick to the principles and you got to be consistent and you got to keep investing because that’s how you’re going to make money at the moment. There’s a slowdown and the market softened up. There’s your opportunity to buy property and own your future. Don’t let the negativity wreck your mindset and be one of those people that waits. Because I’ve seen this over and over again. The people that waited during the GFC, they lost money. The people that waited for COVID lost money. The people that wait through this and lost money. Adam Albright You were one of the only people I know who said the property is going to go up at COVID and after COVID. So, like, you know, even myself, who’s been in this business for 26 years, I even sold real estate thinking that, oh, yeah, this is. This is going to be, you know, all of a sudden, bang. What you predicted was exactly true. George Markoski So, yeah, well, if you listen, okay, well, look at this. What’s happening to building prices, they’re going up, builders are going to go broke, right? Because I only look at two things, and I’ll look at supply and demand. Adam Albright What’s happening to supply, that’s very tight. George Markoski There’s Going to be less completions. People push this out. Bill is going to get broken. There’ll be less completions. There’s going to be less supply. Also to replace the property because it’s going to cost more. Adam Albright Yeah. George Markoski You see how many immigrants are coming into Australia. They’re going to still need to live somewhere. Right. Every three people that come to Australia need one dwelling. You’ve got to look at that. So it’s going to be pretty crazy. And what I’m saying to people is stay the course, be calm and just buy property. Buy and hold. Because that’s how you become rich. You become wealthy by ignoring all the noise and sticking to the fundamentals. That’s all you do. That’s how simple. Okay, let’s do our Q and A. Good on you, George. Thank you. You’re right, George. Knowing the reasons why we are becoming investors, service comes to mind to help other people maintain or repair their own properties. Love it. I work in oil and gas. Big mistake. Closed refineries down in Australia. Absolutely. Thank you, Dave. God bless President Trump. Okay. George Markoski I don’t know why they said that. Yeah, Bless him as he’s tongue in cheek. Adam Albright I think that one. George Markoski I think so. Yes. Adam Albright Because he said he’s not going to start any wars. He’s going to end them all. He started more wars than anyone else. He loves him. Look, look, I would too if I had a busy. My backyard. George Markoski Yeah. Well, look, I mean at the end of the day, Adam, look, when Trump was coming in power, the left were pretty crazy and he looked like, wow, he’s going to come in and change things. What did he say? I’m going to release the Epstein files. Adam Albright Yep. George Markoski And I’m going to not do any wars. What did he do? Stop them from being released. Adam Albright Yeah. George Markoski Right. Completely and utterly. And they spent. They had 2,000 lawyers redacting his name out of it. They should call it the Trump files, not the Epstein files. And then he started more wars than everyone else. So what he said was great. What he did was the opposite. Okay, Craig. The same amount of fuel is coming in before the war. However, the government is withholding it to raise the reserve. Okay, there you go. Solar batteries are coming down too now, Adam. Adam Albright Coming down price. Yeah, they probably are. George Markoski It’s almost as if they’re trying to weed out the lower side of the middle class. If they’re actually for the people, their lower rates impose a tax on gas and become self sufficient. Absolutely, Craig, Absolutely. Queensland’s oil take the size of Singapore. Yeah. The Queensland Lake of Oil is the size of Singapore. Adam Albright That’s a big. George Markoski That’s huge. Right. I’m saying, shit, Queensland, freedom. Queensland, get some freedom. They’ve got a very bad government, very bad people. We’re going to come and help them. Adam Albright Yeah. George Markoski Okay. What did the property market do after the oil crisis in the ’70s, Adam? Good question. That was one of our biggest booms. Right. Adam Albright So what happened, baby boomers here is that 70s. George Markoski The 70s is X generation because they’re born in 70s. We had the OPEC oil crisis the 1970s. Adam Albright That’s right. George Markoski And that was actually one of the first biggest booms in property in Australia. What are the primary strategic investment advantages so to acquiring residential real estate in the Whitham Vale suburb in Victoria at the moment? This is amazing to say, but if you look at the graph, because I keep track of everything and I wanted to share it tonight but I’m going to share it next Thursday. And if you look at prices, because I like to look at the national price and then all the different capitals, guess who, what market is in Australia? Adam Albright Victoria. George Markoski Victoria. Melbourne’s the most affordable market in Australia and it’s a big advantage because one way, when you’re the most affordable market, you’re only going one way. Absolutely. Because Victoria cannot stay as the most affordable market. Victoria is going to be in the top three markets in Australia. Okay, I’m recording this now, 2nd of April 2026. Listen carefully because we can play this back in a couple of years because I remember what I said, Brisbane is going to be the second highest market in Australia about 10 years ago. And I kept saying it and there it is. It is. Well, Victoria is going to be in the top three again. It will get back there, don’t worry. It’s a big city. It’s going to happen. What’s the market doing in Loganholme? George Markoski I’m comparing it with properties of secured in Caboolture and Townsville and the difference in purchase price and rentals are very different. We’re expecting to see a surge of. Adam Albright Rentals in Loganholme. No, there won’t be a surge of rentals there. No, there’s not enough land there to develop because it’s halfway between Brisbane and Gold Coast. It’s the last sort of area you can develop. So yes, it’s going to put prices up in that area. George Markoski Okay. Are we expecting new release in Lakelands? Okay. I think now it’s time to go to our private group because we’re going to talk about certain suburbs and things like that. So to the public group, thank you for watching. Thanks for subscribing to us. Have a happy Easter. Easter is actually the popular day in Australia bit more people go away at Easter than Christmas. Have a very safe and wonderful Easter and I’ll see you next Thursday night. We’re going to go back into our internal group now. Thank you. Adam Albright Thank you.