Australia's Inflation Low, Dollar Strong, Property-Real-Estate Buoyant

Australia's Inflation Low, Dollar Strong, Property-Real-Estate Buoyant

The TD Securities-Melbourne Institute Inflation Gauge rose by 0.2 per cent in March, putting the annual rate of inflation at 2.1 per cent, which is an eight-month low and the annual inflation rate now sits at the bottom of the Reserve Bank's target range of 2 to 3 per cent according to the TD Securities index.

TD Securities' head of Asia-Pacific research, Annette Beacher, says prices rose for alcohol and tobacco, and clothing and footwear in March but they fell for fruit and vegetables, household appliances and computers and other personal technology equipment.

The index shows the summer floods in New South Wales and Queensland appear to have had no effect on fruit and vegetable prices so "We're seeing extremely benign inflation," Ms Beacher said.

The month of March usually picks-up on the inflation gauge but that' absent for this month with the strong Australian-Dollar keeping prices for imported goods and tradeable inflation quite low,  but prices for domestic goods are rising at a much faster pace.

We probably should be grateful that the Australian-Dollar is as strong as it is, because what we've seen for the last couple of months now is that domestic inflation is running at about 3 per cent.

One thing is for certain and that is the Australian-Property-Real-Estate sector is buoyant as we are experiencing a huge pick up in enquiry rates and property purchases particularly in the investment housing sector in areas from the south-east corner of Queensland to the central coast of Queensland.