It is once again the time of the year for the traditional review, thank yous and predictions for the coming year.
Overall it has been a very good year for GPS. Competition has further reduced in our niche lending market. The banks have also assisted by driving home loan lending, which further supports the end take out of the product we fund.
The Brisbane residential property market remains very boring with price growth at around inflation levels and low/medium sale prices. This is just how I like it. I do not believe the Brisbane apartment market is heading towards being oversupplied. There are a lot of unviable projects with development approvals. The viable projects are struggling to achieve finance. I now receive around two applications for finance per day, but GPS only funds about two projects per month.
The exciting news at GPS is that we have now gone “live” on a new operating platform. We have brought the system in from the USA, as we could not find anything suitable in Australia. This is due to Australia not having a big enough market, as we only have a small number of banks and other financial institutions. In the USA they have about 5000 banks, and even more if you include Canada.
2016 is shaping up to be another good year for GPS. We remain very mindful of not over expanding while marketing conditions are being so kind to us. It will continue to all be about good prudential lending and looking after our investors. The challenge ahead of us is improving our service levels and learning how to use more of the capacity of the operating platform. I estimate that we are only around at the 10% level of understanding what this new operating platform can do.
Finally, and most importantly, thank you to all the loyal GPS investors. We could not have achieved what we have achieved without your ongoing support and referrals. It is truly appreciated.
