Up, up and up – so where to for 2022?
WHAT a year it has been for the property market.
CoreLogic summed it up well when it sent out its last 2021 report: “Unprecedented, unpredictable and unforgettable – 2021 had it all”.
Who could have believed that at the start of this year, the property rush that kicked off six months earlier would push on not only through the first half of the year but right to the very end? We watched as house prices soared, in some suburbs more than 40 per cent; in most of them, if not all, by at least 10 per cent.
The median house price for the Gold Coast has risen an astounding $150,000 since January to reach $850,000, while units too have risen to a median of $500,000.
More than 40 suburbs smashed their highest sale price records. One, Mermaid Waters, broke it eight times.
Meanwhile, the number of prestige homes fetching eyewatering sums soared to unprecedented levels, with more than 30 properties commanding prices of $10m or more. The priciest went for a whopping $23.75m.
In an interesting aside, the sellers of a Maryland Ave mansion in Carrara, one of the first prestige listings of the year, ended up being the buyers behind the last big prestige sale for the year.
V8 supercar champion Paul Weel and his wife Emma sold their Carrara home listed in January 2021 for $10.9m and went on to spend $15.9m in December for a beachfront pad in Mermaid Beach.
It was only in the week before Christmas that the market felt like it was taking its first brief pause since the juggernaut began.
Agents report inquiries have slowed somewhat. National data shows auction numbers are down and clearance rates also, albeit only slightly, on the monster 80 to 90 per cent rates we were experiencing during the year.
Optimists are viewing the lull as simple end-of-year fatigue, with buyers, sellers and agents grabbing the opportunity of a brief reprieve before
it starts all over again in mid-January.
Pessimists are, naturally, seeing the slowdown as the first signs that the market has peaked and the only way to go from here is down.
The reality is no one has a crystal ball to foretell which way the market will go, although in the coming weeks, many analysts and forecasters will be giving it their best shot.
It is, however, worth paying attention to what they say, if for no other reason than knowledge is power.
If you are thinking of buying or selling next year, assess what your priorities are, for instance, are you investing, looking for your dream home or seeking a temporary lifestyle change?
Research as much as you can about the market you are buying into to find the suburbs that best suit your goals.
Which suburbs are earmarked for growth, which offer the best value for money, or which are more family-friendly?
These are all questions that can be answered with
some certainty based on data.
The best advice that anyone has ever given me about property, however, is that whatever you do, do something, just do it within your means.
A clear trend this year was that those buyers who sat on their hands, trying to secondguess the market, suddenly found themselves priced out of their local area, forcing them to settle for something less, farther out, or leaving them renting for longer.
Things may be different next year; only time will tell.