Chapter 1: What factors are impacting the Australian property market in 2022?
It's the Real Estate Podcast, brought to you by Ray White, the largest real estate and property group in Australasia. And welcome to another episode of the Real Estate Podcast, available on iHeartRadio, also on Google and Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts from. Well, it's another Friday morning, which means another episode from the podcast series, Let's Talk Property.
And the first three months of this year, I've got to say, have delivered some tough messages to all Aussies, including property owners and investors. With floods on the East Coast, potential fallout from the Ukraine conflict, the uncertainty around the upcoming election, and of course the worry about rising interest rates, there's a lot for people to think about and to digest.
But hopefully, hopefully there is a silver lining coming. we could be entering a return to normal period in the national property market cycle. And that means that not all markets will perform in the same way. And there are ways to take advantage of this. Unlike 2021, when almost every location enjoyed strong capital gains,
In 2022, you will need to be more selective on where you choose to invest. And one of the regions that we've seen with great potential is the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. And to help us understand this better, we're joined by Rich Harvey, buyer agent and CEO from propertybuyer.com.au. Good morning, Rich. Welcome back to the Real Estate Podcast. How was your week? Ah, good. Thanks, Craig.
And it was a lot drier than it was last week, I tell you. So with the deluge we had the week before, it was nice to finally see the sun poking its head through the clouds. Yeah, yeah. May that continue. Well, as we mentioned, you know, the Sunshine Coast, we have featured on the podcast before.
And for people living in another state, they might not know what the main towns and regions are that make up the Sunshine Coast. So perhaps we could start there. Sure. So, look, the Sunshine Coast, it's often sort of not thought of.
People think of the Gold Coast in Brisbane, but just an hour to an hour and a half north, depending which part of the coast you head to, it's a very short hop, skip and a jump from Brisbane. The main towns, it really extends from Caloundra in the south right up to Noosa Heads in the north.
And some of the main towns include Caloundra, Malula Bar, Maroochydore, Markoola, Coolum, Sunshine Beach, Rainbow Beach. And then you've got the hinterland areas. So places like Gympie, Umundi, Yandina, Nambour, Mapleton, and then the beautiful little townships of Montville and Mullaney.
So it's a real mix of an eclectic mix of areas full of some beautiful coastlines, some stunning mountain ranges, the Glasshouse Mountains there. And you've got some beautiful farmland, very, very fertile, very high rainfall, and then some really quaint villages and some cool cosmopolitan hubs that make up the Sunshine Coast. Yeah, Mooloolaba is one of my favourite places for sure.
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Chapter 2: What makes the Sunshine Coast a desirable location for buyers?
But I think the other factor to look at Craig is population growth. If we look at the numbers that are predicted up to the year 2041, the Sunshine Coast anticipates that there'll be over half a million people locating in that area by 2041. So that's an increase of around 2.2% a year. So it's well above the national averages and that's around 8,300 more people coming to that region.
And so council have anticipated they need at least 217,000 dwellings to accommodate that many people coming into the area. So bottom line is absolutely the attraction will last. The beaches aren't going anywhere. The Glasshouse Mountains aren't moving. All the attractions are going to be there in the future.
And I guess it would be remiss of me if I didn't ask you about that all-important rental market on the Sunshine Coast. What do you think is happening there? Yeah, like a lot of other places around Australia and the key regional areas, vacancy is very tight.
So SQM Research have just released their latest figures and indicate a vacancy rate of around half a percent, so 0.5%, which is unbelievably low. Some places have zero vacancy. Obviously, places in northern New South Wales like Ballina, Lismore have absolutely been decimated. There's an absolutely massive shortage of housing there.
But on the Sunshine Coast, we've seen asking rents rise to $662 per week. And that's coming up from a $500 a week median just two years ago. So it's a very, very tight rental market. Unfortunately, it's going to be a problem for some essential workers as well. So there needs to be more affordable options built there.
But for investors, it's good news because it just means that rental prices will rise, which will increase the yield on their investment over time. And if people are sitting comfortably in another state thinking, gee, Rich, this all sounds good. I want to join that mass exodus to the Sunshine Coast. How do they invest in the Sunshine Coast? What is the best way for them to go about that?
Well, I think for any homebuyer investor, it's really important not to buy sight unseen. If you're going to buy in another city, I highly recommend using a buyer's agent like my company to help you buy. You need to use someone who you trust, who's independent and also knows the local area really well. So we have a number of local experts on the ground and that local knowledge is an
key to success in buying well if you're located out of the area. If you try to do everything yourself just by phone calls and photos, it could end in disaster. But I can't emphasize enough that importance of local knowledge to get that inside information so you know not just what price to pay, but what street to buy in and what quality of property to buy.
And a lot of people think, oh, look, I'll just also wait for the market to drop a little bit. I don't believe the Sunshine Coast is going to go backwards. It's going to slow down in terms of the speed of growth, but it's certainly not going to go backwards in any sort of major measure.
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