While hundreds of job cuts in Canberra are expected to undermine sentiment in the territory, the loss of workers will not have a long-term impact on the housing market, the property industry says.
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The federal government said on Tuesday that 800 public service jobs would be shed as part of a raft of spending cuts. It expects the workers will be mostly ACT-based and from the executive and senior ranks of the public service.
Colliers International ACT chief executive Paul Powderly said the cuts were "pretty much smack on" with what the industry had forecast.
He said it was not expected to affect the housing market as the losses were anticipated and they would simply serve to redistribute the classification levels across the service.
"Some people can be doomsayers but … it's natural across all business," he said.
Mr Powderly said there were more public servants putting up their hands for voluntary redundancies than there were packages available.
President of the Real Estate Institute of the ACT Michael Kumm said there was a vast number of public servants who would retire soon. "The reality is most of those people will stay in Canberra," he said.
Executive director of the Housing Industry Association for ACT/southern NSW Neil Evans said that while job cuts would not hit the territory that hard, they would hit sentiment.
