\u2018Like a cruise ship\u2019: Penthouse with rooftop pool listed<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThere is no such thing as \u2018the Australian property market\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are hundreds of markets, and right now many are moving in opposite directions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Dury picked the regional cities he believed offered the strongest combination of value, rental demand and economic diversity for buyers in the $700,000 to $1 million bracket, with one golden rule being to buy established homes, not house-and-land packages.<\/p>\n
In Queensland, he picked Toowoomba, Townsville and Mackay.<\/p>\n
\u201cToowoomba is the standout inland performer, with double-digit annual growth, an economy spanning health, education, agribusiness and the Wellcamp airport and logistics precinct, and established homes on big blocks still available under $800,000,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTownsville has been one of the fastest-growing markets in the country over the past year,<\/p>\n
underpinned by defence, the port, health, education and major energy projects. Its median house price is still around the mid-$700,000s, delivering extraordinary value for northern Australia\u2019s capital.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMackay has matured well beyond a resources town, with health, marine, agriculture and services jobs supporting a market where vacancy rates are razor thin and established housing remains firmly in the sweet-spot price band.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Victoria, his top picks were Geelong, Bendigo and Ballarat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile Melbourne corrects, Geelong offers a diversified economy across health, education,<\/p>\n
advanced manufacturing and the port, plus genuine lifestyle appeal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuality established homes remain accessible around the $700,000 to $900,000 mark \u2013 something Melbourne buyers can only dream about within 10 kilometres of their CBD.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Bendigo and Ballarat, he said both cities had hospitals, universities, government employment and strong commuter links, with established period homes still available in the $600,000s and $700,000s. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs Melbourne softens, value hunters are already looking up the highway,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His only pick in NSW was Wagga Wagga.<\/p>\n
\u201cWagga is the classic multi-engine regional city with defence, health, education, agriculture, and transport all driving the local economy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt also has a tight rental market driving rents and prices higher.<\/p>\n
Mr Dury said local-level indicators that revealed opportunity included vacancy rates, days on market, the ratio of owner-occupiers to renters, listing volumes, local population growth and the diversity of the employment base, none of which appear in the headline index.<\/p>\n
\u201cA suburb with a vacancy rate under one per cent, homes selling in a fortnight and seven in ten homes owned by the people living in them tells you far more than any national number ever will,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Dury says the regional surge is being driven by structural forces, not sentiment \u2014 severe rental shortages with regional vacancy rates around 1.5 per cent, affordability refugees priced out of the capitals, sustained internal migration, and chronically constrained new housing supply.<\/p>\n
\u201cHigher interest rates and the new investor tax settings have knocked confidence in the big cities, but they haven\u2019t changed the fundamentals in the regions with too many people chasing too few homes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Originally published as Property expert reveals Australian regional hotspots amid capital city downturn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A leading property expert says the wave of gloomy headlines about Australia\u2019s softening property market is masking one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8168,1898,247],"class_list":["post-49088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-qldre","tag-reqld","tag-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}