This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
SOUTH-east Queensland’s land market is on track to achieve its highest quarterly number of sales in nearly three years amid an uptick in demand.
Data from property services firm Oliver Hume data shows there were a combined 879 sales in the region in April and May, with 486 sales needed to eclipse the quarterly long-term average of 1,364 sales per quarter
“There are a lot of first home buyers looking to get off the rental treadmill while second home buyers are taking advantage of recent capital growth of their existing property to upgrade to a new home,” said Oliver Hume Queensland general manager Dan Ross said.
Oliver Hume is this weekend releasing more than 80 new home sites at Helensvale, Gleneagle, Park Ridge and Coomera. Ross said hundreds of buyers had already registered for the releases.
“Such is the demand that we would expect most, if not all, of these homesites to be sold in the next month.”
Oliver Hume CEO project marketing Julian Coppini said the supply constraints that had plagued the south-east Queensland market for the last three years had begun to ease.
“The HomeBuilder initiative bought forward a lot of land releases across the south-east and was followed by a period of undersupply as developers struggled to bring projects to market,” he said.
“It will take some time, but we are slowly returning to more normal market conditions where buyers will have a much wider range of choices.”
He said many buyers are still concerned about building prices but are seeking to mitigate this by focusing on homesites that are ready to build on in the next six months.
“Any homesite that is registered and ready to build is being snapped up very quickly.”
In April, the Queensland government passed the Housing Availability and Affordability (Planning and Other Legislation Amendment) Bill 2023, aiming to unlock housing and land supply across the state through new powers for the Planning Minister, new land use zones and new development assessment pathways.
The government delivered the final ShapingSEQ 2023 Update in December last year, which will support its ambition to deliver 900,000 new homes in south east Queensland by 2046 to accommodate 2.2 million new residents.
Oliver Hume’s recent Quarterly Market Insights report for the March quarter showed Ipswich has taken back the title of south-east Queensland’s most affordable destination for new land buyers with a small dip in prices making the growth area more than $12,000 cheaper on average than Logan.
Logan had held the title as the south-east’s best value land for more than 12 months but a surge in demand and prices in the three months to end of March boosted average prices in the area by 3.8% to $332,000.
The median price of land in Ipswich fell 2.6% in the March quarter to $319,000 but still remained 1.6% higher over the 12 months to end of the March.
