Point Cook Vic

I looked at Point Cook (from the desktop) for a friend of mine recently.

The median house price is $430,000 @ July 2009 – capital growth has averaged 3.66% per annum over the last 5 years.

The median unit price is $190,000 @ July 2009 – capital growth has averaged -3.84% per annum over the last 5 years.

18% of the suburb rents, so an ok rental pool.

A quick look on http://www.realestate.com shows Point Cook is oversupplied with new houses, which is probably why prices are dropping.

Please note that most of Melbourne’s property prices are rising.

http://www.realestate.com also shows an oversupply of rental properties which will cause rents to drop and vacancy is probably higher than the Melbourne average.

If you were buying in Point Cook, just based on this data alone, you would have to buy “very well” and be prepared for some short to median term price falls, rent falls and longer vacancies. I wouldn’t recommend it to my clients unless we negotiated a bargain from a very motivated vendor.

I do know that there is some good infrastructure proposed for Craigieburn – shopping centres etc………you could also check the same sort of statistics that I listed above for Point Cook to get a better idea.

When there are a lot of new houses being built in an area, its a good idea to check how many of them are being taking up by owner occupiers and how many investors are buying. I noticed that with Point Cook, the houses were being promoted by some project markers to interstate buyers. With a lot of investment properties come on the market at once, having a higher vacancy period is a real risk.

Much more on the ground research needs to be done to qualify the short to medium term investment potential of an area.

The long term prospects are good in these areas however, you need to buy right today as well.