PropertyChat Demographic Survey Suggestions

I want to start doing an annual survey of our members to work out who we are and what our views on the property market are.

I'm trying to work out the questions I should be asking - I thought I'd ask everyone for their input on what types of information you would be interested in seeing from such a survey.

The survey would be anonymous - no personally identifiable information will be collected and all data would be presented in aggregated form only.

Here are my initial thoughts (incomplete):

• Gender
• Age group
  • <= 25
  • 26-35
  • 36-45
  • 46-55
  • 56-65
  • 65+
• Region you live in
  
  • NSW
  • VIC
  • QLD
  • ACT
  • SA
  • WA
  • NT
  • TAS
  • New Zealand
  • Overseas
• Where you live
  
  • Capital city
  • Regional centre
  • Rural / small town
• Employment status
  • Full time employee
  • Part time employee
  • Self-employed (business)
  • Full time actively managing investments
  • Unemployed and looking for work
  • Full time carer
  • Fully retired (not actively generating income)
• Household income per annum
  • Under $50K
  • $50K to $100K
  • $100K to $200K
  • $200K to $500K
  • $500K to $1m
  • Over $1m
  • Prefer not to disclose
• Approximate household net worth
  • Under $50K
  • $50K to $100K
  • $100K to $500K
  • $500K to $1m
  • $1m to $5m
  • $5m to $10m
  • Over $10m
  • Prefer not to disclose

• How many investment properties do you own?
  • None yet
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6-10
  • 11-20
  • > 20

• Which of the following services have you recently used or intend to use in the next 12 months? [choose all that apply]
  • Mortgage Broker
  • Accountant
  • Buyers Agent
  • Quantity Surveyor (depreciation specialist)
  • Valuer (engaged directly by you, not by lender)
  • Conveyancer
  • Property Manager
  • Real Estate Sales Agent
  • Architect
  • Town Planner
  • Builder
• What structures do you use to own investment properties (excluding PPOR)? [choose all that apply]
  • Own name (TIC / JT)
  • Discretionary trust
  • Unit trust
  • Hybrid trust
  • Company
  • Self Managed Super Fund
• Do you use negative gearing for your investment properties?
  • Yes, I offset my income losses against my personal salary
  • No, my portfolio is cashflow positive
  • No, my portfolio is held via a vehicle which doesn't allow negative gearing

• Excluding your superannuation, what other non-real estate investments do you hold? [or should we ask for percentage breakdown of each asset class?]
  • Cash (excluding offset accounts)
  • Shares (directly held)
  • Managed Funds
  • ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds)
  • LICs (Listed Investment Companies)
  • LPTs (Listed Property Trusts)
  • Other MIS (Managed Investment Schemes)
  • Gold and other precious metals
  • Other assets

I'll add some more later.

I'm interested in suggestions for both questions to ask (and how to word them) and in the types of answers to let people choose (eg are there other types of service providers you use? other options you would suggest or options you would change for some questions?).

 

I don't want to get as specific as postcode - in some cases it could lead to people being personally identified from the raw data.

I think capital city vs regional centre is pretty self explanatory - Sydney = capital city, Parramatta = a suburb of city, which is the capital city.

I'm not really interested in how many people live in Parramatta (or any other specific suburb or town). I don't think it tells us anything useful compared to city vs non-city.

I might change it to list, say, the top 15 cities/localities by population size instead, so we could include Newcastle, Wollongong, Geelong, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, etc

It's a crude measure - in general, it's more interesting to know how many people own 0 vs 1 vs 2 vs 3 or more ... because that indicates either their risk profile (many people only ever buy 1 IP ... but those people aren't as likely to be on this site), or the stage at which they are at in their investing journey (eg have only bought 2 so far, but planning on buying more). The intention would be to take this number along with some measure of portfolio value.

I know the outliers might have 1 commercial property worth $10m, and 1 Sydney property is often worth more than multiple Adelaide properties, but number of properties is still an interesting number because it tells you far more than just how much someone is worth.

Perhaps if we asked "how many real estate transactions have you made?" instead - to produce an indication of how active they are in their investing? Someone who has purchased one $1m IP is very different to someone who has purchased 10x $100K IPs, even though their portfolios are worth the same amount.

Similarly, someone who is nearing the end of their journey and selling down or consolidating their portfolio may only have a couple of IPs, but have been involved in quite a few transactions.

As for number versus range ... in general I want to avoid people having to input raw numbers to avoid anomalies appearing. Unless I need a specific number for other calculations, it's far less important to have specific numbers (6 vs 7), since I'm only going to aggregate the data into a range anyway. Again, it's far less useful to know that someone has 17 properties than it is to know how many people have "more than 10". Once you get over a certain number, the actual number is unimportant. "Lots" is a good enough answer.

Yes, that's a good suggestion. Value of IP portfolio and value of loans, from this I can also work out LVRs.

 

Where you live

• NSW: Sydney
• NSW: Newcastle-Maitland
• NSW: Wollongong
• NSW: Other
• VIC: Melbourne
• VIC: Other
• QLD: Brisbane
• QLD: Gold Coast-Tweed Heads
• QLD: Sunshine Coast
• QLD: Other
• WA: Perth
• WA: Other
• SA: Adelaide
• SA: Other
• ACT: Canberra-Queanbeyan
• TAS
• NT
• Overseas: NZ
• Overseas: Other

 

... although:



xkcd: Heatmap

 

In the past two years have you [select all that apply]:

• bought a residential investment property
• bought a commercial investment property
• bought property off the plan
• bought vacant land
• bought property interstate
• bought property overseas
• bought property in a regional or rural area
• renovated a house or unit
• built a house
• built a granny-flat
• converted a property to multiple-occupancy
• undertaken a small development (up to 4 dwellings)
• undertaken a large development (> 4 dwellings)
• subdivided a block of land
• relocated a house to another site
• strata titled a property
• bought property in a joint venture
• invested in a property syndicate

 

Yes, I tend to count separate tenancies (so I count my block as 4, even though it's only two titles), although I would generally not count separately leased rooms as multiple tenancies - that's basically a sublet arrangement.

But yes, it would need to be defined in the question.

 

Household income per annum (gross income from all employment or business excluding investment income)

• Under $50K
• $50K to $100K
• $100K to $150K
• $150K to $200K
• $200K to $500K
• $500K to $1m
• Over $1m
• Prefer not to disclose

Do you think that is sufficiently self-explanatory?

The goal is to get a broad idea of how much people earn outside of their investments.

Income from investments isn't really that interesting in my opinion. I'm more interested in the overall net-cashflow (hence the question about cashflow positive / cashflow negative with negative gearing / cashflow negative without negative gearing).

 

Thanks - have edited a couple of the original ranges.

Are there actually any "commonly" used ranges? In most of the similar surveys I've seen, everyone uses a different range.

Does the ABS use consistent ranges for age, etc?

 

Not sure I want to go to that level of detail?

Trying to find a balance between finding really useful or interesting information versus having too many questions where people just give up and don't finish the survey.

If enough people want to see a particular statistic, or if there is a sufficiently compelling reason to include something, I will consider it.

Perhaps I could have a survey to choose the survey questions? I'll start a poll about it - "Should I start a survey so people can choose which survey questions they want?"

 

Do you have a self-managed super fund? [Y/N]

If Y: Does your SMSF invest directly in real estate:

• no, and don't intend to
• no, but considering it
• no, but do intend to
• yes

 

Do you intend to purchase investment property within the next 12 months? [Y/N]

If Y: Where do you intend to purchase:

• NSW: Sydney
• NSW: Other
• VIC: Melbourne
• VIC: Other
• QLD: Brisbane
• QLD: Other
• WA: Perth
• WA: Other
• SA: Adelaide
• SA: Other
• ACT
• TAS
• NT
• Overseas

 

I don't think there's much we can do about that. It gets incredibly complicated if we start trying to include investment income in the calculations.

Gross investment income is meaningless without considering the expenses and tax, net investment income after tax can only be calculated once you take other income and tax brackets into account. Then what about capital gains? Is that income? It certainly affects how much tax you pay, so there is a direct impact on your after-tax income, even if you don't want to count it as income in itself.

It's like - I can't do my personal tax returns until I have my trust tax returns done, I can't do my trust tax returns until I get all my company tax returns done, everything is interconnected and there is no simple answer to how much income I earn once you start to take investments into account.

Happy to be convinced otherwise if you have any suggestions on how we might otherwise do it!!

We need to start with the end in mind - think about "what question are we trying to answer?" - that will help determine which question we need to ask.

In this case, I'm trying to answer the question of how much are people making from the "work" they do, as opposed to from their investments.

I'd like to try and see what kind of correlation there is between how much people earn and their investments.

I guess it is also interesting to know how much income people generate from their investments - but exactly how do we calculate that - how do we word that question?