Danielle Law

So, you know, the good thing with the Mackay area is there is a lot of opportunity to choose the lifestyle that you wish to live, whether that's beach, whether that's bush.

Acreage is another popular segment in our real estate market.

But then just as equally, you know, we've got a lot of people looking for that

inner city convenience, walkability, and also just affordability.

Again, like you touched on earlier, for first home buyers, for them, certainly they've been blessed to be looking at some support there with these government guarantees, enabling them to maybe make their decision into buying sooner than later.

And yes, certainly they will be pursuing those properties sort of under $400,000 or just above.

Yes, look, I think Mackay was really quite blessed coming into this COVID pandemic, I guess, in that we were coming just out of the early days of our own decline in our market that we'd experienced from a previous mining boom.

So we came into COVID quite affordable, actually, and with good balance of supply.

So, yes, certainly it's been onwards and upwards since COVID has had its influence and benefited those regional areas like Mackay.

So I think, you know, the way forward for Mackay is that at the moment, you know, we have an issue where we have a very severe tight squeeze on our rental market.

Unfortunately, there has been an underinvestment in housing for the last sort of 10 years for the better part of it.

The issue we have then is where do people live?

We have a lot of people who don't have a house while we're in that sort of climate.

That's certainly going to, I think, if not maintain the level of interest and demand on our market, but also ensure that it remains more sustainable moving forward as well.

Yes, I'm really glad you brought this up actually, because that is certainly one part of our market, which is quite strained, to be honest with you.

And certainly if anyone's maybe even considering an investment into Mackay, it would be welcome with open arms with a vacancy rate of less than 1%.

It's very competitive to secure rental properties at the moment.

So certainly for the typical home, the average sort of median price you're looking at is around $425 to $430 a week.

Within only an average day is a market of around 18 days.

So generally we have tight supply and those homes are being taken up by the market within two to three weeks of being listed for rent.