With the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, gateway cities like Geelong, Newcastle and Wollongong saw soaring house prices as people escaped the dense capital cities (Gabites, 2021). In fact, Australian capital city growth in 2020 was highly correlated with COVID-19 infection cases in their respective states (Hu, Lee and Zou, 2021).
Which raises the question, will gateway cities continue their growth as desirable alternatives to capital cities? Gateway cities remain a possible solution to ease congestion and population growth of our crowded capitals (Morrison, 2019). We have identified Geelong, Victoria as a future high- density housing area due to its proximity to Melbourne, transport (airport, highway and train connection) and amenities (waterfront, schools and parks, NBN FTTB technology).
Discuss the current state of the apartment housing market in Geelong, Victoria, identifying the drivers of this development growth. Include any capital market issues (e.g. credit availability and exposure, interest rate expectations, potential tax changes) that you think may impact the market in your discussion.
Part B: 3 Marks Using the data provided within MMP321 CloudDeakin, titled “Geelong Data”, complete the following tasks:
i) Produce a descriptive statistics table for the variables; sale price, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, number of apartments in the building and whether the building is newly constructed and whether the sale occurred pre COVID-19 lockdown (prior to March 2020).
ii) Provide a brief discussion of the statistics (mean, median, mode, standard deviation, min, max, range) for each of the variables. You may use charts to highlight your discussion.