Unit’s sale confirms bargain hunters rule
COULD this be Cairns’s cheapest unit?
Analysis and commentary is plentiful around the city’s stagnant property prices and 18/259 Sheridan St, Cairns, North proves it.
Although the property market is expected to pick up in 2018 amid sustained growth in tourism and employment figures, Pamela Coutts’ investment property was sold last month for $60,000, the exact same amount she paid for it two years earlier.
Remax sales agent Cathy Ratcliffe said the 42 sqm studio holiday rental was the cheapest property she had ever sold.
“It went under contract in the first week. There was lots of interest and I could have probably sold it at least 10 times over,” she said.
“Because it is in a block of holiday apartments it can only be rented short term for a minimum of three months.
“The lady who bought it wants to live in it a few months of the year then rent it out.
“It is the cheapest property I’ve sold. I know there have been some good buys out on Anderson Rd there near the caravan park in years gone by, but this is something else.”
Cairns resident Ms Coutts said costs of maintaining the property ultimately made it a less than attractive investment.
“I was attracted to it because it was pretty affordable. It was my first holiday rental property,” she said.
Ms Coutts said other apartments in the Cairns Holiday Lodge building had not sold as quickly as number 18.
The apartment was originally sold for $110,000 in 1994 but a month later changed hands for just $82, 051.
In 2003 it was sold for even less at $42,175 and two years later the entire unit block was bought for $824,000 before Ms Coutts snapped it up for $60,000.
According to the latest Cairns Watch report, the median house price in the city was $411,000, $210,000 for a unit and $213,000 for a block of land as of December last year.
REIQ Cairns zone chairman Tom Quaid said, as evidenced by the recent bargain sale, the region’s property prices still favoured buyers.