THE 18-YEAR LAND CYCLE: POPPYCOCK, PATTERN OR PREDICTIVE POWER?
This week I sat down with property analyst Michael Matusik, who has spent more than three decades working across Australia's housing, property and planning sectors.
Michael has recently conducted his own investigation into the 18-year land cycle, prompted by questions from attendees at his annual Master Class about Samuel Benner's famous financial timetable, (shown below.)
I wrote about Benner’s chart in some detail a year or so ago in The Prophecies of Samuel Benner & George Tritch – What They Reveal About the Land Cycle.
However, Michael’s analysis gives me a good opportunity to revisit it, because there are a few important aspects of Benner’s work that are particularly relevant to where we are in the cycle today. Rather than accepting the 18-year land cycle at face value, Michael went back through Australian housing data to see whether the long cyclical pattern could be identified independently.
I was delighted to read Michael’s analysis. It is exactly what we need to see when it comes to the cycle!
As I pointed out in my Land Cycle paper, the 1930s produced a substantial body of research into long property cycles, with researchers including Homer Hoyt, Roy Wenzlick, Arthur H. Cole and Clarence Long among many others, independently arriving at broadly the same conclusion - that there was, on average, a 16–20 year property cycle across numerous markets.
It is only when this body of evidence is properly recognised that we are likely to see broader mainstream acceptance that the land cycle is not simply an historical curiosity, but a predictable feature of the economy - and one that requires policy intervention before the speculative peak is reached, rather than attempts to repair the economic damage after the cycle has already broken.
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