Four hotspots to put on your radar
While tourist destinations around Australia have been shunned for property investment over the past few years, a few are back on the radar as potential hotspots.
According to Andrew Peterson from Next Hot Spot, tourist destinations in Queensland are finally starting to move.
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“We’re seeing a revival in the tourism based locations which have been very poor performers for the past four or five years,” he told Smart Property Investment.
Mr Peterson believes these areas, as well as the entire south-east Queensland region, are moving into a revival phase.
“Any town or city that has its local economy based on tourism has done pretty poorly since the global financial crisis struck," he explains.
However, he lists certain destinations as potential hotspots for investors to consider a little more closely, noting they'll be going through a 'revival phase':
- Sunshine Coast
- Hervey Bay
- Cairns
- Whitsundays
“These are places I would never have recommended over the past five years, but they’re starting to creep back onto the reports, particularly Cairns and the Sunshine Coast," he says.
According to Dr Andrew Wilson, senior economist at Australian Property Monitors, these areas have definitely seen growth since the beginning of the year.
“We’re starting to see an improvement in activity on the Gold Coast. This is in line with what we’re seeing in the entire south east Queensland market as well as most of the larger capital city markets.
“Our latest figures show that median prices on the Gold Coast were up by 1.3 per cent over the March quarter and up 3.6 per cent over the year, so there’s certainly a better story there for the market.
“We’ve now had three consecutive quarters of price growth on the Gold Coast so signs are pointing to a much more positive environment.
“We’ve moved away from bumping along the bottom into a recovering phase in the housing cycle for most of south east Queensland,” Mr Wilson said.
Mr Peterson claims that tourism took a beating from a high Australian dollar, which has now subsided.
“Some of these tourism areas have realised they need to reinvent themselves so they can broaden their economies so they’re not so reliant on tourism.
“But tourism has come back quite strongly particularly from China, and a lot of investment comes from behind that as well.”
