Bellarine land sales surge as buyers seek a seachange
LAND sales across the Bellarine Peninsula have hit new heights as people camp out overnight to secure a dream block.
Sixteen groups camped out overnight in St Leonards to secure a block of land in the Seachange estate, with 21 blocks selling the day they came on the market.
Seachange is not the only estate on the Bellarine Peninsula in high demand.
Stages in Kingston Estate, Ocean Grove, are selling out quickly, while in the Armstrong Creek growth corridor, the number of land sales is creating records.
Agent Luke Campbell, from Neville Richards, St Leonards, said the demand for land in Seachange had reached unprecedented levels and far beyond his expectations, with 80 lots sold in three months.
“The earliest buyer (camping overnight) arrived at 3pm Friday for a 9am Saturday release,” Mr Campbell said.
“The group was dominated by an older demographic looking for future retirement, along with some investors coming from as far as North Sydney.”
Fellow Neville Richards agent Greg Campbell said St Leonards had been a hidden secret for a long time and buyers were now discovering it.
“A lot of people are cashing in on their houses in Melbourne, making quite a lot of money and putting it in superannuation and coming down here for a nice lifestyle,” he said.
In Ocean Grove, the most recent release, stage 34, in Kingston has sold out.
Ocean Grove Real Estate principal Allason Lynch said construction had not even started on stage 34.
“We have held back our next land release to give construction time to progress a bit further,” Ms Lynch said.
She said land had always been popular, but the resale value of homes in Kingston had skyrocketed.
“Four to five years down the track we are seeing huge prices on homes that were bought and built here and are now being on-sold,” she said.
For example, 27 Evergreen Circuit, Ocean Grove, recently sold for $720,000, just four years after it sold for $228,500 as a block of land, according to CoreLogic.
In the Armstrong Creek growth corridor, land sales continue to increase.
Warralily recorded 89 sales in the month of August and Villawood’s Armstrong estate recorded 62 sales.
For both estates that was a record number of monthly sales.