As many people enter ‘hump day’ of their first week back at work, it seems that many have started their real estate buying and selling a little earlier in the year than usual.
Last Saturday, my team and I met more buyers at open homes than we did on any Saturday in 2017.
We’ve already sold numerous properties this week this year and at the time of writing this blog, we have offers on six of our properties with contracts likely to be agreed and signed off on at least four of these.
There’s clearly more buyers out force than what is traditionally experienced at this time of the year but what’s also surprising is that there’s plenty of new listings coming to market…again, more properties than what we’d expect to see compared to previous years in the second week of January.
So the big question is ‘Will this trend continue?’
Gazing into the crystal ball and predicting the property market is something that many leading economists and commentators do at this time of the year and I find it fascinating to take a look at the wide range of expectations.
Late last year, one leading Australian news source started the day with an article that read “Australia’s Property Boom is Officially Over” whilst another leading news publication ran the story “Aussie House Prices Set To Soar” on the very same day!
So who will be right and who will be wrong?
In South-East Queensland, we’ve probably had one of the most stable property markets over the past decade with small increases in median house prices.
Many have long predicted that Brisbane will be the next capital city to boom and if you simply Google “Brisbane Property Price Predictions 2018”, you’ll see that many are still riding this bandwagon.
Whilst I’d love to believe that this is true, I’ve been told that slow job growth has kept our market well in check compared to our Southern counter-parts.
Last year, my team and I sold properties in 26 different suburbs across Brisbane and we observed moderate growth in all of these areas although (in our experience), prices at the lower end of the market (homes under $500,000) seemed to experience a higher percentage growth than those homes that are more expensive.
Will this change in 2018?
There’s a strong indication that we’ll see little movement in interest rates for 2018 but as they’ve been at record lows for such a long time now, clearly there’s no way that any change at all in interest rates will create any impact on our property market.
Strong growth in jobs is more likely to create a little more impact although I believe that we’ll be a little influenced by what happens in the markets down South.
Not many predicted that Sydney and Melbourne median house prices would have climbed as sharply as they did and there’s still a few predicting that this growth will continue but from what I’m hearing from some real estate agents that I know in both Sydney and Melbourne, it seems that the top of the market has clearly been reached and demand is just starting to soften.
In my experience, I’ve never seen Brisbane property prices soar sharply when the Sydney and Melbourne markets are in any form of decline so I believe that those predicting huge growth for South-East Queensland may be a little too excited.
Right now, (from what we’re hearing), the Sunshine Coast is the strongest market in Queensland as it seems to be a haven for retirees and those looking for a more laid back lifestyle.
Funnily enough, at one point mid-way through last year, we had 20 properties for sale and of these 20 sellers, 16 were relocating to a location somewhere between Bribie Island and Noosa so we’re not surprised why this market is on the move.
So our prediction for 2018 is that we believe Brisbane will again see some small increments in median house prices with much of this growth to be gained in the first quarter of this year, and afterwards, we can foresee the market settling down to what we’d describe as a pretty ‘normal’ market.
Will we be right?
As always, time will be the ultimate judge and jury.
Until next week, Happy Listing and Happy Selling.