What to believe? Is consumer confidence up or down?

The news has become a little confusing these days. One day you hear that real estate is 'booming' in Australia, and then you read the next day that house prices in Perth have fallen by about 1.3 percent so far this year and could go down by as much as 5 percent over the year.

So what is it? Booming or not?

The devil is in the detail. Because real estate is apparently doing so well in Melbourne, Sydney (especially in Sydney), and Brisbane and the number of people/houses in those cities is much higher than in Perth, then the overall picture for Australia is that real estate is doing very well. But when you take Perth out of the pie and look at it by itself then Perth is going slightly backwards.

It's the same story with the 'consumer confidence' index. About three or four days ago on ABC24 there was an item telling us that consumer confidence in Australia—after being flat or going down during 2014—is tilting upwards so far in 2015 (although it is still in negative territory*). Then in today's (Saturday's) Australian newspaper we read that the consumer confidence index is at a five year low—in Western Australia.

Image links to item at Perthnow.com.

So it would appear that while the rest of Australia is not doing so badly, things aren't going that well for us lot here in Western Australia.

* From what I can work out the consumer confidence index is marked out of 200. When the index is 101 or higher it is 'positive' (good) and when it is 100 or lower it is 'negative' (bad).

Barry.