My Weekly Preview, Sunshine Coast
The top property areas to watch next year and beyond have been revealed, with all the locations sharing similar qualities — and the Sunshine Coast is one of them, one of the nation’s top property forecasters says.
Terry Ryder, Hotspotting founder and author of the new book Why Property Values Rise, says the areas are already showing the hallmarks of market outperformance, including rising cycles over the past few years. “Locations that outperform the market averages have common qualities because I’ve made a particular study of them for the past 20 years — it’s been a crusade of sorts,” Mr Ryder writes in his new book.
“Real estate consumers often fixate on the idea that individual suburbs will do better than their neighbours. The reality is that it’s rare for one suburb to star while its neighbours underperform. Market performance tends to happen in clusters, with a group of suburbs being influenced by the same factors, such as a major new piece of infrastructure.”
Over the past two decades, Mr Ryder has developed an “empirical formula” to identify the areas set to outperform over a five-year period, including markets that feature diverse economies; populations above 15,000; good existing infrastructure as well as evidence of new, major projects; low vacancy rates; increasing employment opportunities; and strong sales activity pointing to future property price growth. “In my formula, the local economy is the pivotal factor,” he writes.
“It’s worth repeating this point because real estate is local in nature and real estate markets arise out of local economies. It’s apparent that the notion of an ‘Australian property market’ driven by interest rate trends and consumer confidence is nonsense. There are always more complex forces in play.”
Mr Ryder rates our region among the strongest economic and real estate stories in the nation. “It has transitioned from a tourist town with a struggling property market to one of Australia’s major growth cities — one with pretensions to be regarded as an international city,” he says. “It’s a case study of how investment in infrastructure can be the ultimate game changer.
Around 2020, the Sunshine Coast was in the midst of rolling out an infrastructure pipeline totalling $20 billion. Although tourism remains an important industry to the Sunshine Coast, its economy is insulated by the evolving medical precinct, the ongoing construction of the CBD and population growth, for which the region consistently ranks in the national top 10.”
