Mildura – an exercise in analytical thinking – sharpening your research tools

 Land available for residential development like 30 years worth.  No scarcity value. Plenty of builders, competition means low buiding costs, means it is better to build your own house than buy one.  Shortage of workers retarding buisness  and economic  growth.   Local council may allow residential homes on small rural zoned blocks.  Despite green retohric from government backflip on solar energy grant.           I think  you should look at Swan Hill in preferance to  Mildura     Angel.  While land other than   Tower Hill is still available.   There is only one way the city can grow  Flood plains on 2  sides and river on one.   Council owned development on the other. some of whom happen to be involved in real estate      Back wards or deliberatly difficult council wont release enough land for development, and their requirements to get a building permit are far more stringent thean in there own development.  I would expect land prices to start climbing. Just my opinion .     There is still very limited land available near the river at reasonable price but I dont expect that to last long.  There is a shortage of good rental accomodation and there have been large influx of immigrant workers there in the last 18 months.

 HI Angel, I dont agree with your analyis The  reason fot the increase in houses on the market is demand, more house have been put on the market  because of increasing prices over  the last 12 months after 2 years of stagnation.  Median prices have risen  6% in the last quarter. A vacancy rate of 1.4% doesnt indicate people are not baling out.  What I have been told by agents and developers is the there is alot of demand from retirees and FHBs who are priced out of places like Melbourne.  I dont understand how you can say flooding will get worse.     The drains just  passed the ulimate test.   I cant name any other city in the world that can have  more than its annual rainfall in a few hours and have its drainage system work so well,  that there is such minimal flooding.    Many of those that got flooded, got flooded because of stupidity, they built where a blind man could see it would flood, such as right at a low point of 2 long inclines.  Then complain the drains arent big enough to handle a 1 in 200yr event. So do we spend 10x more on drainage which probably wont help much just to acomodate  those whinging fools.  Houses  were getting watwer inside because the roof gutters couldnt take the water away fast enough and water was running down inside the walls.   Midura didnt come under threat from the river either like places upstream and down stream.

With regards to the drainage issue in Mildura, I believe the council/government are going to be spending quite a bit of the forthcoming budget on fixing the problem. Google the local paper "Sunraysia Daily" and see what they are saying.

Mildura has suffered 10 years of drought and then flooding rains but this year could be a big one for agricultural and horticultural sectors of the community. Farmers around the district are busy sowing huge acreage crops and looking toward a bumper year. The horticulture industry has been hit hard too which has resulted in job losses but this can turnaround pretty quickly. Additional mineral sands mines have been announced and although these are in outlying areas, workers tend to live in Mildura and travel out. The state government and council is also expanding the airport which is encouraging. You now hear of people commuting to Melbourne from Mildura each week! Choosing lifestyle and affordability for maybe the same time commute.

Margret Lomas has maintained that Mildura is a great buy, and despite all the negatives it is still good. Yields are good, vacancy is low and prices are more than affordable. Although new homes are constantly being built in new estates away from the river (the main attraction) there are some good opportunities to purchase older style homes closer to the CBD and river, subdivide and do smaller developments.

You can get a 4 bed home for under $200K depending where it is and these rent incredibly fast and at good yields. As you may realise I own a couple in Mildura and am spruiking it to reaffirm my investment but I would still invest there again if the right opportunity arose.

There's too much cheap land, no scarcity. Also, the agricultural industry is in a very bad way.