I have been flicking through the lates property mag and it mentions mt hotham as a potential area for growth. Has anyone else on here invested in hotham or similar areas.It seems that units are the majority. Is that bad. I know the winter pulls good rent but when you add things like cleaning,slower summer months and from what i understand there are other significant bodycorp fees well above the average unit. Does it still make sense.What are your thoughts.With units above and below the $100,000 mark it might be a good cheaper way for first timers to cut there teeth on property investing.What are your thoughts
Hi Devo,
A couple of warning points –
1) Often these articles are puff pieces written with pretty heavy input from the real estate agents (I think it's John Castran at Mt Hotham/Dinner plain)
2) You need to be careful with the Dinner Plain/Mt Hotham difference – Dinner plain properties are a bus ride away from the slopes and therefore less popular
3) Bodycorp can make renovating your unit or upgrading it difficult.
4) Management can be expensive
5) You definitely need to be able to budget, as you may not have much income between September and July
6) Depending on what you believe about global warming – we may not have a ski season in a few years time.It's a pretty specialised area, I dont think it would be a great place to start investing, remembering that you get what you pay for, also!
Why dont you look at units in areas like Brunswick West, Kensington, Yarraville, West Melbourne etc, where you are on a guaranteed capital growth and consistent rental wicket? You may be able to find a "problem" with an easy solution for under 200k.Good luck
I love skiing and snow and love the idea of owning property in a snow village, BUT there’s a big problem with the aussie snow season. It generally lasts for the months of July and August (if you’re lucky you will see some white stuff in June and September but that’s a good season here), and the last few years have had very minimal snow cover and disastrous skiing. So, the long term outlook for snow property is that these resorts will have to become year round resorts, not just relying on the ski season. How and when and if that can occur are unknowns. If you are up at Hotham anytime that is not ski season it’s generally a ghost town. There are a handful of staff that live there year round. If you want to invest in a ski town I would recommend focussing your interest overseas somewhere like Canada or Japan where there is much more stability in year round use and also in good snowfall to attract the visitors. I have no idea or comment on if there will be snow in 5, 10, 20, 50 years time, but with all the talk of drought, global warming and rising temperatures, it doesn’t mix well with snow which requires moisture and cold temperatures to happen! From an investment point of view I would say there are better investment vehicles than snow property. Good luck.
Thanks for your comments. My thought are the same. Good to hear them backed up.
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