Australian investors waking up to regional property market opportunities: Hotspotting's Terry Ryder
EXPERT OBSERVER
Anyone who reads my reports will know I’m finding many of the best markets across the nation in Regional Australia.
Most of the strongest markets for sales activity and price growth in the past two years have been found outside the capital cities and the regional areas of Victoria, NSW, Tasmania and Queensland continue to present large numbers of growth numbers.
I tell seminar audiences around Australia this is a good thing for investors, because the regions have lower prices and higher rental yields. And, if you choose your locations well, you’re well-placed for good capital growth as well.
It’s a message that most Australians haven’t been getting, because the major research firms focus primarily on the capital cities and major media obsesses over the markets in Melbourne and Sydney.
As I told seminar audiences in Mackay recently, Central Queensland cities will never feature in national media unless there’s a cyclone or flood. Mackay, in fact, is a growth market with low vacancies, strong rentals and rising prices, boosted by positive events in the local economy.
But gradually, it seems, Australia is waking up to the opportunities presented by markets in Regional Australia.
Agency network PRDnationwide published an August report which predicted that regional centres are set to outperform capital cities over the next six months as affordable prices and higher returns lure buyers.
It said regional areas generally had fared better than metropolitan markets recently and that performance would continue over the second half of the year.
PRDnationwide’s national research manager Asti Mardiasmo said: “Regional areas are more insulated than bigger cities due to the increased infrastructure developments, cheaper house prices and big businesses moving their head offices to regional areas,” Mardiasmo said.
This correlates with Hotspotting research which has identified rising sales activity and good price growth in many of the regional markets in the major eastern states, as well as Tasmania and Western Australia.
The monthly reports of national valuation firm Herron Todd White have also recorded uplift in many of the nation’s regional markets.
Its latest National Property Clock suggests that markets are rising or recovering in regional centres such as Tamworth, Dubbo, Albury and Bathurst in NSW; Townsville, Mackay, Cairns, Gladstone, the Sunshine Coast, Hervey Bay and Emerald in Queensland; Karratha and Port Hedland in WA; Shepparton and Wodonga in Victoria; and Launceston in Tasmania.
Markets at the bottom of the cycle ahead of recovery include Alice Springs, Rockhampton and Toowoomba.
Hotspotting would add a number of key regional cities to the list of strong markets, including Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria, and Orange, Wagga Wagga, Goulburn, Queanbeyan, the Hunter Valley and the Tweed region in NSW.
In the Winter edition of the Price Predictor Index, 30 of the National Top 50 Super-charged Suburbs list were regional locations.
Brisbane-based researcher Propertyology published an analysis of population trends across the nation and suggested the areas where property markets benefited the most from interstate and intrastate migration were regional cities like the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and Geelong.
A recent report by the Regional Australia Institute, based on a research project by the University of South Australia and Southern Cross University, urged Australians to consider the regions as an alternative to the major cities - it says many regional towns offer jobs, affordable housing, lifestyle and scope for economic growth, as well as less congestion and a lower cost of living.
The university research project compared wages, employment, congestion and house prices among outer suburban and metropolitan areas, and the regions.
The study found that while wages might be less in the regions compared to cities, job prospects are often at least as good and the cost of living is lower than the big cities.
Terry Ryder is the founder of hotspotting.com.au
twitter.com/hotspotting