The ‘goss’ on Coolum area sales

House for sale statistics in our local, established area show a significant tightening of house stock availability, which strongly suggests we are moving away from the strong buyer “discount” market of recent times to a more balanced market.

The situation with high rise apartments/units is quite different, due mainly to pressures on the higher investor ownership & their general unsuitability for owner-occupiers.

This class of property ownership sees much better use of capital elsewhere, and often this divestment is more of a financial necessity than a desire!

Over many years I have tracked statistics for the same house population of some 2.200 in Mount Coolum and Yaroomba, & a range of between 3% to 4% of the housing population has generally been on the market at any one point in time. Over 4%, or under 3% historically means market change skewing towards either the benefit of the buyer or the seller.

By contrast, It got to 4.5% last year, is now down to 2.15%, this is  a reduction of over 50% of houses on the market.

 Put simply, the choice for buyers is much diminished, which theoretically should lead to more realistic offers from buyers and potential sellers now looking to make that move.

This change in the older, established areas is overlooked by the casual observer as relatively new estates such as The Boardwalk and Peregian Springs continue to suffer from oversupply at higher prices.

These developments were fuelled by builder and investor “spec” home construction, believing prices would continue to rise exponentially, & also to benefit from high depreciation allowances during the first 5/7 years of a new building.

The cream of depreciation has been claimed, prices have fallen well below replacement cost & financial stress has kicked in, hence properties are readily available in these estates

The combination of high stock availability, very low prices on record & price marketing by leading agencies, , eg, “bargain hunters welcome”, “owner must sell”, “make an offer” continues to shape buyer expectations downwards in these estates.

Sooner or later the penny will drop with buyers as to the true value of the more spacious, well presented, older, established home between $400,000 and $500,000, &those buyers early enough to recognize the opportunity will buy, those that don`t will miss out because this stock is in very limited supply.