Hello,
I live in the Whitsundays. I have a PPOR and have been considering investment property.
I have been watching the market here for 7 years and have listened to many people with respect to their views of the property market and the area in general etc.
I love this place and I cant see why other wont in future, there is no-where else in the country whereby you can live within 10min of town and within 1/2 hour of 74 islands.
I started watching the market at the start of the 'boom' (so to speak). It seems property had been continuing to achieve 7 – 10% growth per annum. Suddenly southern developers and investors showed an interest in the area and brought in their projects, their money and their investors. We were seeing in excess of 10% growth pa. (land for example was closer to 20%) The realestate agents and industry people said it was because 'people were finally starting to hear about the Whitsundays and they wanted in', The locals in the pub had a different view 'property was overpriced being driven up by realestate agents and there would have to be a crash'…. This growth continued for at least 5 years.
After the GFC prices started to stablise as the rate of sale slowed. Generally speaking the property market has stablised with no real capital gains at present (certainly not like in years previous). Those having to sell are making a loss if they purchased in the boom. Suddenly mortgagee sales would allow purchasers to buy property at say 2004 (start of boom) prices.
I have to say this has me very excited. I am seeing properties go for say $100,000 less than they would have sold for a couple of years ago. I want to run out and buy them all (probably lucky that I cant afford to or I might be writing to ask how to get myself out of trouble).
Now, we all know (as locals) that this place is unique and what we are seeing now should not be seen for quite some time in future. We know places like this take off because we have seen Noosa and Byron Bay and the likes so we are all happy with keeping our money here.
Now sorry.. to finally get to my question.
For those that have experience this sort of thing in the past, do I race out and buy these mortagee sale properties today? (i.e. auction tonight) or do I sit back for 6 months or so and watch as there will be many more of these opportunities as more people experience stress over the coming 12 months? Do I wait until I see property moving back up in value or do I snag what I can while I can?
I know no-one has the answer but I am curious about thoughts.
Always invest counter cyclically – that is when the crowd is scared to buy (like now). When everyone is investing take caution, it usually means your nearing the peak of the market.
I love the Whitsundays, one of my favorite places. But I wouldn’t invest their personally.
The population is not growing enough, there is no major infrastructure going in and it relies heavily on tourism which always gets a battering during economic downturns.
You will still do well there (5+%) but not as well compared to investing close to the city or work nodes in our Major cities.
The only holiday area i have invested in is the gold coast in Southport and that is only due to massive infrastructure projects including light rail and a huge population explosion.
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