The Courier Mail, By Elizabeth Tilley
Houses in some of Queensland’s most exclusive postcodes are earning tens of thousands of dollars a year more than their owners, with price gains in some suburbs easily exceeding take-home pay.
Analysis by RiskWise Property Research, provided exclusively to The Courier Mail, has found houses in Mermaid Beach on the Gold Coast have posted average annual increases of $120,702 over the past five years — without their owners having to lift a finger. That’s $44,600 more a year than the median annual household income in the suburb of $76,076.
The average price of a house in the millionaire’s playground of Mermaid Beach is $1.425 million and apartments are around $420,000.
In Sunshine Beach in the Noosa Shire, house prices have increased by an average of $109,401 a year in the past five years – that’s significantly more than the annual median income of $69,680.
Even in the blue chip suburb of New Farm in Brisbane, where households take home an annual wage of $93,704, property has earned more. Houses in the suburb have increased more than $500,000 in the past five years, according to RiskWise — that’s an average annual price rise of around $100,000. The property research group identified eight suburbs in Queensland where house price growth has outpaced household incomes over five years.
RiskWise Property Research chief executive Doron Peleg said the fact the vast majority of the suburbs were beachside reflected a national trend of sea-change suburbs outperforming treechange suburbs.
“We are seeing a combination of retirees, business owners and entrepreneurs and a significantly growing number of mobile professionals moving to these lifestyle locations,” Mr Peleg said.
He said the suburbs were all considered “lucrative” in southeast Queensland, attracting high net worth individuals and a high socio-economic demographic.
They also outperformed in terms of capital growth, Mr Peleg said.
“These suburbs form a league of their own in the sense that the prices are completely different and significantly higher than the median price in their regions,” he said.
Mr Peleg said demand from interstate migrants had helped pushed prices up in those suburbs, but they were still affordable compared with similar suburbs in New South Wales and Victoria.
“With the exception of Main Beach, the rest of the suburbs have median prices of around $1.3 – 1.4 million, and if you compare those numbers to Sydney and Melbourne, the prices are still very cheap in comparison to the same suburbs,” he said.
“When you compare apples with apples, what you pay for what you get is outstanding.”
Source: RiskWise Property, CoreLogic, ABS
FULL STORY VIA realestate.com.au & Courier Mail
