GAMES ADDED BONUS IN GOLDEN ERA FOR COAST REAL ESTATE
THE 2018 Commonwealth Games are an adrenalin shot for an already active market.
The Gold Coast property market has been extremely buoyant for the past 18 months and the growth started long before the athletes and visitors arrived. But when you factor in Easter and the school holidays, it’s a bit of a perfect storm for the real estate market.
In fact, Harcourts Coastal did 135 sales totalling $101 million last month which was $30 million up on February – that’s a huge amount.
The Games shouldn’t be viewed as the reason the market is going well. If they didn’t exist the market would still be doing very nicely and that’s a good thing because you want the Gold Coast to stand on its own merit.
The growth in our property market has come about from the fundamentals of supply and demand with our region being recognised as “the place” to invest in the national landscape.
There are several factors that have fuelled our growth.
1. We were undervalued to begin with. Our prices compared with other southern markets represent extreme value and it was only a matter of time before southern investors recognised our comparative value.
2. Southern sea or treechange buyers have swooped in to secure buy/rent/ and move into later retirement homes in the hope that they have timed the market by buying now.
3. Local buyers have been very strong with significant up-scaling in many suburbs
The backdrop of the Games has provided a great “investment story” and has also placed increased demand on the rental market with all the added employment associated with creating the necessary infrastructure.
The Games to date has been like the icing on the cake but make no mistake the cake was already significant.
Many vendors have rushed to the market in what we could describe as a pre-Christmas effect as they don’t want to be dealing with the logistics of selling during the Games. And we were already in the spotlight of people from Sydney and Melbourne looking for their second and third investment properties as their markets have cooled.
Will there be stories of people from overseas who come here, see a property they love and buy it? Yes, but these Games are the world’s best advertisement for our city and they are going to have a flowon effect.
We don’t expect any downturn in the market postGames. I think it will be the opposite. Look at Sydney postOlympics in 2000. That was when their boom started rather than ended.
And while the 2006 Commonwealth Games had little impact on the Melbourne market that was because it was more of a backstory to their market. On the Gold Coast they are such a significant thing that they’ve impacted employment and therefore rental rates and vacancy rates.
The Games have set us up perfectly for growth – I really believe that. What they have done is shine a light on this amazing region and if numbers are anything to go by they will continue to be strong.