Gladstone Queensland's top performer: REIQ
Median house prices in the resource boom town of Gladstone, 550 kilometres north of Brisbane, increased by 6.1% over the June quarter, according to Real Estate Institute of Queensland figures.
The median house price in Gladstone now stands at $440,250 and has grown 10.8% over the year to June.
The institute does not provide the number of properties sold, but realestate.com.au listings reveal that around 115 Gladstone properties changed hands over the three-months period.
The most expensive Gladstone house currently up for sale on realestate.com.au is a six-bedroom, two-bathroom dwelling on a 1,500-square-metre block at 3 Yarroon Street, being sold by Darryle Branthwaite from Raine & Horne Gladstone. The property is being targeted at developers and is already zoned for high-density residential with a price tag of $1.2 million.
The surge in houses prices in Gladstone follows the REIQ revealing that rental vacancies over the June quarter fell from 1.4% to just 0.6% on the back of big energy, mining and infrastructure projects scheduled to commence in the region over the next 10 years.
“The multibillion-dollar investment in Queensland’s resources industry in the Central Queensland region is again behind Gladstone’s strong performance but we are also seeing this market strength radiate out to its neighbours of Mackay and Rockhampton in this quarter as well,” says chairwoman Pamela Bennett.
Mackay’s median house price increased 4.4% to $413,500 over the quarter, while the number of preliminary house sales in Rockhampton was up 23% compared with the previous quarter.
According to Bennett, the strength of Queensland’s resources sector will underpin the Queensland property market more broadly from the second half of 2012 or early 2013.
Latest figures from the institute show the median price of Coast housing fell by 0.1% during the three-month period and are down 2.8% for the year to June. It left the median price of Sunshine Coast houses at $450,000 at the end of the June quarter.
The three-month result outshone the Gold Coast (down 6.1%), the Fraser Coast (down 5.1%), Ipswich (down 4.7%), Cairns (down 5.6%) and Rockhampton (down 3.9%).
The Sunshine Coast also performed well in volume of sales for the quarter, with figures slightly up while the Gold Coast fell 9% and Cairns was down 10%.
Best-performing suburb for the 12 months was the Mooloolah Valley, where the median price of a house rose 20.2% to $478,000 while Moffat Beach also fared well, up 13.5% to $520,000.
Doonan was up 11.9% to $670,000 and Parrearra rose 8.4% to $535,000.
At the other end of the scale, the median price of a house at Sunshine Beach fell 34.6% over the 12 months to June 30, down to $1.23 million.