How they flee with glee! The incredible rush to Queensland this summer
A smile on your face, the sun on your back. Many of us will barely step off the tarmac before we cry ‘We should move here!’ What is it about house hunting when we’re on holidays? Lockdown-weary southerners will be especially keen to look about Queensland...
Residz Team 3 min read
A smile on your face, the sun on your back. Having missed out on Christmas and summer holidays the past two years, tens of thousands will flood into Queensland this summer. Many of us will barely step off the tarmac before we cry ‘We should move here!’ What is it about house hunting when we’re on holidays? Lockdown-weary southerners will be especially keen to look about Queensland when the borders finally open this Christmas and January.
Queensland will allow fully vaccinated people to enter without quarantining from December 17, or when the state reaches 80% full vaccination (over 16s), but travellers must first test negative to COVID-19 in the 72 hours prior to travel.
Already, NSW residents and Victorians are rushing to organise trips north. Seven Network reports Virgin Australia experienced a 134% increase in bookings from Melbourne to Queensland after the border opening announcement.
All flights are bound to be full unless the borders snap shut. Accommodation is already tight. Airbnb reported the most searched for destinations included The Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, and Tweed areas. All eyes now are on Queensland’s vaccination rate. C’mon cane toads!
So, what will the real estate windows show us as we meander back from the cafe? In an October report released by CoreLogic, dwellings (houses and units) in regional Queensland jumped just over 22% to an average of nearly $470,000 in the past 12 months. Some parts of Brisbane are becoming almost as expensive as outer areas of Sydney or Melbourne with an Australian Housing Outlook report predicting Brisbane homes will hit $806,000 on average by 2024. It’s an increase of 17.8% over three years. Inner-city Brisbane suburbs are most likely to perform the best post-pandemic, with buyers wanting buzz and infrastructure in their lifestyle change. Theatre anyone?
Yet, as the QBE chart shows, Brisbane and many parts of Queensland are generally still affordable compared with other NSW and Victorian locations near the coast. The Annual Investor Sentiment Survey by Property Investment Professionals of Australia (PIPA) found 58% believed Queensland offered the best property investment prospects over the next 12 months.
You hear stories of southern buyers snapping up homes over the phone. Many of them are investors adding to their portfolios. But there are plenty of younger first home buyers in there too.
For a start, Domain's Queensland Spotlight Report shows that first home buyer concessions go a lot further in the state in terms of choice of home. A first home buyer has a choice of 39% of Brisbane’s suburbs with a median house price below the concession threshold of $550,000. If they choose the Sunshine Coast they can find something in 15% of the suburbs at that price, and the Gold Coast has 12%. For this reason, holidaymakers with healthy incomes or bank accounts will be window shopping the real estate agent near their Airbnb. Instead of renting, they’ll be thinking, it might make sense to make a lifestyle tree change or sea change while interest rates are low.
Around 58,000 people moved to Queensland in the six months to March 2021 and Greater Brisbane got the bulk of the net flow in the year prior to March 2021 according to Australian Bureau of Statistics. This is going to continue in the lead-up to the Olympics in 2032.
Even before the winning Olympic bid was announced, the Queensland Government Statistician's Office research predicted Greater Brisbane would gain an additional 1.31 million people over 25 years (under the medium series of projections), increasing the population to 3.67 million by 2041. Its low projection estimate is one million, the high is 1.62 million.
People moving from overseas are expected to make the greatest contribution, with between 490,000 and 820,000 predicted to call Queensland home. International border restrictions have, of course, paused all this. However, more than 680,000 Australians have returned to the country since the Government recommended people reconsider the need to travel abroad in March last year, and some will find the capitals Melbourne and Sydney far more expensive than when they left. Surely many will holiday in Queensland and start looking for an attractive alternative.