Andrew Bell’s Market Wrap: The Signs for Spring are Strong

Issue 19 | Thursday 22 September 2022 | The Signs for Spring are Strong 

Hi Andrew Bell with you and great to see a run of beautiful spring weather. While I just go through this week’s enews. I want to share with you an insight into this magnificent property here at 300 Monaco Street in Broadbeach Waters. This is quite a remarkable property an enormous gated estate with a flat 3132 square meters of Main River frontage. In fact, this landholding is the second largest on the exclusive Monaco Street, there’s a huge 46.2-meter water frontage with an exclusive private sandy beach, the best beach along Monaco Street, and of course, the home massive home, 1212 square meters in total, five bedrooms, four bathrooms. For more on this magnificent property please contact marketing agents Jackson Paradise or Keegan Shaw from our Prestige division.

My last eNews about illogical decisions at the government level stirred up an incredible response. Whilst a couple of people felt there was a political agenda behind the commentary overwhelming number of people acknowledged it was about bad policy. Through my 40-plus years in the industry, I have dealt with governments of both persuasion and in every government, there are poor decisions that are made, and I certainly call out any government that is in power if there is a bad housing policy, as that is the industry that I am associated in.

I was also amazed at how many tenants were outraged to think that these two policies were going to make life even more difficult for them. I am pleased that the Qld Premiere has called for a Housing Summit to discuss the crisis, so I can only hope that they have the courage to defer these two decisions until the crisis passes because it’s going to be the tenants that suffer the worse. More of that later.

No question that rising costs of living, and in particular rising interest rates have been having an effect on the market. It’s early days of the correction phase in the real estate cycle, yet there are parts of Australia reporting 15-20% correction in real estate prices from their peak, but it’s not uniform and there are some very clear signs that the Gold Coast market is amongst the best performing market in Australia. At this stage, there is no sign of any substantial decline in the migration into Qld, and in particular the Gold Coast. I have mentioned over the last 2 years that one of my indicators is rental enquiries. We have one of the largest rent roles in Qld and pre-pandemic there were approximately 300 rental enquiries per month. At the peak of the boom, it rose to around 14,000 but has eased back to a consistent rate of over 10,000 per month through most of this year. Likewise in monitoring our enquiry and inspection numbers for people buying property and the percentage of enquiry out of interstate has softened only minutely, yet it remains strong.

Another indication is the percentage of auction properties selling under the hammer. You have got to remember that most auction properties do sell, but the media chooses to monitor just those that have sold by auction day as their monitoring tool. Around the country, success rates have been hovering sub 50%, although they are rising now and whilst the latest figures from REA show a success rate in the 50% range our in-room auctions and on-site auctions over the last week record 72.5% success rate which has risen now to over 85% with after auction sales. I acknowledge that over a measure of the past 20 years we have always ranked as the highest performing real estate company in Qld in auctions by a significant amount but put that aside and the fact is success rates at auctions have been rising over the past four weeks.

The other two measures that we use are the volumes of enquiries on properties for sale and that’s ticked up strongly in the past 4 weeks and the average number of people registering to bid on auctions, which has also risen.
While all of the above measures buyer activity on the other side of the coin stock levels remain acutely low here on the Gold Coast, and so the stage is set for a very firm real estate market through spring and the lead into summer.
We had our Muscular Dystrophy Charity Ball last Saturday night and wow, what a night. I want to thank so many of you who came along and people who donated a record amount was raised some $354,000 and are going to get to work very, very quickly to help the young kids with muscular dystrophy and to keep fighting for a cure for this disease.

I want to acknowledge Queen Elizabeth II, a great lady and leader and her passing which really drove home one clear message to me. One day she was welcoming in a new Prime Minister and two days later she passed. None of us knows when that final day comes so the understanding to make the best of every day should be our mantra. Try not to sweat the small stuff and truly embrace life every living day.

Well it’s spring, the Gold Coast shines, and I wish you all the very best.

Warm Regards,

Andrew Bell, OAM
Chief Executive Officer
The Ray White Surfers Paradise Group

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