Property investment is still number one
16 July 2004
The latest ING Melbourne Institute
Household Savings and Investment report for the June quarter
2004 shows the majority of Australians are choosing to pay off
their home loans and invest in property with any spare cash they
have.
According to the report, 26.6% of
recipients said they intended to repay debt, including home loan
debt with new savings. The ING data shows paying off debt has
grown in popularity over the past two years, with 17.7% of
people in June 2003 saying they would use additional cash to pay
off their debts while 15.8% said the same in June 2002.
Investment in property was the second most
popular way to spend cash, with 25.3% of recipients saying they
would use new savings to buy real estate, down from 31.8% in
June 2003.
A further 8.5% of respondents said they
would use new savings to invest in the share market. This is
close to the record 8.9% of people who said they would invest in
shares in the December quarter 2001.
8.3% of people said they would prefer to
invest cash in managed funds, the highest percentage since 8.4%
in December 2001 quarter.
The least popular form of investment, but
one of the fastest growing, was investment in superannuation. Of
all respondents, 2.7% said they would invest new savings in
superannuation, compared with 1.6% in the March 2004 quarter and
1.4% in the June 2003 quarter.
The survey also pointed out the fact that a
record 78.5% of respondents said they had superannuation of some
form, which reflects the compulsory nature of super.
