Brisbane housing market chugging along

The Brisbane property market chugs along, largely under the radar in the national headlines, although NSW purchasers are increasingly attracted by its cheaper prices.

CoreLogic has taken a look at the relationship between housing market growth in the two cities to determine whether the emerging slowdown in Sydney could translate into an acceleration in home buying in Brisbane.

The gap between median home values sits at a price differential of 85% - Sydney's $909,000 median versus $490,000.

The three decade average premium of Sydney dwellings over Brisbane prices has been 55% indicating that the current gap remains attractively above the long-term average.

Over the past 20 years the average gap has been 56% and at 41% during the past decade.

Such a price gap has made Queensland a popular migration destination for people choosing to leave New South Wales.

This has been the case especially following past Sydney surges.

The average quarterly number of persons migrating from New South Wales to Queensland sits at around 12,000 persons per quarter.  

The peak migration to Queensland at around 18,000 per quarter took place in 1989, and again 2002.

The wide gap in the cost of housing between the two cities was evident in both 1989 and 2002, CoreLogic researcher Cameron Kusher noted.

At its 1988 peak, Sydney dwelling values were 104% higher than Brisbane and in 2001, 107% higher than Brisbane.

Kusher concluded the past trends suggest that Brisbane could be well positioned for a pick-up in value growth as the Sydney housing market slows from its current peak.  

But he says there have been instances where value gap surge hasn’t been followed by a price surge in Brisbane.

So a lift in Brisbane activity and prices is no certainty, Kusher concluded, adding that although interstate migration out of NSW is increasing, it is yet to hit anything close to those two previous highs.

He also noted that people leaving NSW for Queensland won't necessarily settle for Brisbane as much as they have in the past.

Both the Gold and Sunshine Coasts are much bigger cities in their own right than they were in 1989 and 2002.

Ignoring the troubled Brisbane apartment market, Hotspotting website founder Terry Ryder recently advised the Brisbane house market was generally buoyant with some suburban precincts even recording double-digit annual growth for which Sydney has been renown for in recent years.

Ryder nominated the leading precinct as the Moreton Bay Region in Brisbane’s far north, where affordability, infrastructure and proximity to jobs nodes are key factors.

The Redcliffe Peninsula, which is part of the Moreton Bay Region LGA, had received particular impetus from the completion of the Moreton Bay Rail Link, a long-awaited piece of transport infrastructure.

Logan City, the mirror image of Moreton Bay in the south of the Greater Brisbane Area, had been a market leader in the past two years, though had perhaps faded a little of late.

Ipswich City, the south-western precinct with similar qualities to Logan City, had many suburbs now delivering good price growth.

This article first appeared in the Daily Telegraph.