Commonly referred to as VIC, Victoria has the smallest land area of any state in Australia, but it also boasts as being the most urbanized state in the country, ahead even of NSW. The population here also has the highest density among all the other states. Like many other areas in Australia, Victoria’s original boom in population stemmed largely from the gold rush during the 1800s, resulting in a surge of immigrants coming into the state to test their fates in search of a fortune in gold. Today however, most people live in the state capital of Melbourne, for a variety of reasons not even remotely related with gold mining.
A Golden History
Much of Victoria’s history lies in the gold rush. This started during the mid-1800s, when the first discoveries at Ballarat, then Bendigo brought along one of the largest influxes of immigrants wanting to have a chance at striking gold in the state. During this time the number of the population swelled from less than eighty thousand to almost five hundred fifty thousand people, many of them Chinese immigrants brought in as mine workers. The gold rush in thiis state was so great that Victoria became the source of one-third of the entire gold output in the world. The gold rush has also led directly to the enrichment of the state and its transformation as the financial capital of both Australia and New Zealand, the neighboring colony also under British rule. However, during the seventies and eighties the city of Sydney has overtaken this city in terms of being a business capital in the country.
Population Demographics
There are over five million residents in Victoria, making it the densest state in the country when it comes to population compared to land mass. The largely Caucasian population also has descendants of the original immigrants in the state that came in to work in the mines. Compared to the rest of Australia however, Victoria has a higher average age for its residents at thirty-seven years old.
The state capital of Melbourne is the densest city in the state as well, with over seventy percent living in the capital. The urbanization has also crept up on Victoria, and many people live in urban centers, and the state only has around ten percent that live in rural areas. The state is also a largely Christian environment, with over sixty percent of the population belonging to several Christian religious groups, and the state has Buddhism as the largest religion outside of Christianity.
Economic Conditions
Victoria has always played a large part in the economic background of the country, from the time of the Australian gold rush up to present times. It’s the second largest economy in Australia, and counts for a quarter of Australia’s gross domestic product, mostly coming in from finance, property, and insurance services. Before those industries became dominant in the state however, Victoria has had an extensive background in manufacturing which at present still counts as the biggest income producer in the state.
Agriculture is the industry which uses the most land among all the different industries present in Victoria. Over sixty percent of the land mass of Victoria is dedicated to the agriculture-related sector, and the output produced by all this land counts for a quarter of the entire produce of the country. Livestock is an important part of the agricultural sector in Australia, having fifteen million sheep in the state and almost three million beef cattle, both used for export to other countries and for domestic consumption. It is also the leading producer of dairy products, and produces two-thirds of the milk production of the country. Other notable contributions to the economy from agriculture include sheep and wool, which accounts for twenty percent of the total wool production in Australia, and Victoria, also exports breeder sheep to other countries and ships sheep to be slaughtered out into the Middle East.
Property Investment in Victoria
The center of all the real estate action in Victoria is in Melbourne, which houses the most number of residents in the whole state. Housing is also becoming more of a rare item in the city recently, with vacancy rates throughout the capital and even suburbs on the outer edge having the lowest records ever in the country. Within the past year, property values in Melbourne have increased five percent during a peak period of three months. The average price of property in the city of Melbourne is now almost two times the state average, at over four hundred thousand dollars in Melbourne compared to the rest of regional Victoria, whose properties average in the range of two hundred fifty thousand.
Rental properties are the best type of investment in Victoria, with the great demand for housing units for lease in the state and much more in the capital, and the low vacancy rates ensure continuous profits from your property. In the inner portion of the capital, properties are vacant less than one percent of the time, and the different rules for real estate rental management make for a very different playing field in the rental market compared to the rest of the country. The small number of investors in this area may be part of the cause of the current situation in Victoria, but in any case your capital investment would surely go a long way in Victoria.
For lower-value properties which are much easier on the pocket, regional Victoria offers the best mix of value, occupancy, and earning power for your amount invested in the property. If you’re willing to pay the significant price premium however, the greatly increased demand for properties in Melbourne can more than make up for the price difference in properties, with a much more lucrative market compared to the rest of the state, and you can reap all the benefits of investment in properties here if you can overcome the price barrier of Melbourne compared to the price levels throughout the state.