[ad_1]
He said some buyers were families looking for affordable options or to upgrade as their family grew, while investors were also active.
Loading
In Greater Melbourne, house prices increased 68.9 per cent in Blairgowrie and at least 50 per cent in McCrae and Rye, as well as Mount Martha and Cape Woolamai.
RT Edgar Rye director Cameron Gulliford said more buyers have been moving to the peninsula permanently in recent years instead of buying holiday homes.
The adoption of remote working when the pandemic hit had increased the area’s appeal, along with the Peninsula Link freeway which improved commuting to inner Melbourne, he said.
“The peninsula has been undervalued for some time and people are starting to recognise the value of having a property down here,” he said.
“A location like the Mornington Peninsula with its beaches, with its wineries, golf courses, with all the attractions that it has … It’s a beautiful spot to live.”
The Mornington Peninsula attracted home buyers when the pandemic hit.Credit: iStock
In south-east Queensland, several once-affordable neighbourhoods on the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast have boomed, as well as suburbs in Brisbane.
The median unit price in Noosa Heads and Coolum Beach has more than doubled over the past five years, while house prices have almost doubled in Buddina, Clear Island Waters and Mermaid Waters.
Tom Offermann Real Estate sales agent Rebekah Offermann said there was a surge in demand for the Noosa Shire during the lockdown years, but only a limited supply of homes for sale because so much land is covered by national parks and waterways.
Loading
Many locked-down southerners reconsidered where they wanted to live or brought forward plans to move north, she said.
“Noosa has always attracted a lot of southern clientele, whether that be for secondary properties, holiday homes and investments or people moving to Queensland and to Noosa for climate and all the rest. But it was definitely exacerbated by COVID.”
Ray White chief economist Nerida Conisbee said demand to live on the coast had been increasing over the long term but was accelerated by the pandemic.
“Mornington Peninsula, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast were always popular, but you couldn’t really easily commute daily from them,” she said.
“The pandemic changed that. People working from home became a much more common thing to do and that led to higher demand and also the desire for holiday homes led to an increase.”
In Sydney, Conisbee said the investment from the state government into public transport connections to the north-west, as well as plans for the new airport in the south-west, had made these areas more liveable.
In terms of whether the growth over the past five years could be sustained in the future, Conisbee said it depended on the area.
For example, the Gold Coast used to be a boom-bust town but has changed to an area with more permanent residents, where first home buyers snap up holiday apartments and there is a shortage of land, she said.
While the gains were good news for those already in the market, they had made it tough for those looking to upsize and increasingly difficult for first home buyers to break into the market.
[ad_2]
Source link
