Presented here is Australia’s single most comprehensive land value dataset. Some records look back into the colonial era, the oldest as early as 1836. The data was compiled by Philip Soos, drawn from both new and esoteric public and private sources, including that from economists Robert Scott, Doug Herps, Alan Taylor, Terry Dwyer and Nigel Stapledon.
The land data tracks through 66 tables covering residential, commercial and rural cross referenced according to GDP, per capita and a host of other factors. The data set references the history of property taxes collected, farm income and incorporates various data lags.
Philip_Soos_Australian_Land_Value_Datasets – PDF (2012)
Philip_Soos_Australian_Land_Value_Datasets – XLS (2012) (xls)
Land is Australia’s largest tangible asset class. Its market price trends inform us of a great deal about the booms and busts of economic cycles – routinely ignored by mainstream economists. The land market is a leviathan unto itself, constituting almost $4 trillion dollars, or two and a half times the size of the economy as measured by Gross Domestic Product as of 2012.
The practical outcome of Philip’s work includes this chart set that went viral in 2013.
Philip Soos is a research Masters candidate at the School of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University, and is a researcher for Prosper Australia.