Puzzling real estate market

THE property market can be a fickle, strange beast and confound experts.

Some properties are easy to sell, others take months, even years

The real estate mantra “location, location, location” seems to run true most of the time.

The sale of a two-bedroom house on a narrow block of land opposite the busy Cairns Hospital in Lake St doesn’t seem like a dream home.

It’s an unusual design, quite striking in some ways, and hasn’t been on the market since it was built 23 years ago.

Yet the interest and the price achieved at auction at the weekend was astounding.

Experienced real estate agent Angela Capitanio was taken aback by the response.

Seventy people attended the auction, there were 12 registered bidders and six active buyers.

The property sold for $670,000 which Ms Capitanio says does not surprise her, although she had no idea what its value was, because it had never been sold before and there is no like-for-like in the immediate area.

But the market has dictated the price.

Last year the median house price in Cairns was $410,000 so it was well above this benchmark.

For about the same money of $670,000 you can buy a nice three bedroom house at one of the indemand suburbs such as Edge Hill or a sprawling acreage home and property on the Tablelands.

According to Herron Todd White the city’s property market is currently in the ‘steady state’.

However the property valuers expect the Cairns market “to experience greater impetus during 2018”. Nick Dalton Deputy editor