Investors ask: Suburbs about to take off
Q. How do you tell the difference between an ‘ugly duckling’ area that is set to gentrify and transform and one which will remain stagnant and undesirable for years to come? Or is it safer just to invest in areas which have already turned the corner?
A. A lot of people won’t buy in an area that the locals don’t favour and in all cities and regional areas we always have suburbs that aren’t quite as favourable for the locals to live in – areas that may have slightly higher crime rates or a lower socio-economic group and very often we are sceptical of buying there.
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One of the things to know about those kinds of areas is that sometimes the ugly duckling can become the beautiful swan in the future. Don’t be fooled into thinking all ugly duckling areas will transform though – they won’t all become the beautiful swan.
You need to look for the growth drivers. You need to look for growing population, gentrification and a council that’s spending money on infrastructure. If you have that and the area is currently one of those ugly duckling areas, you can pretty well expect that in the future, it’s probably going give you a good return on your investment and grow into a much better suburb.
Margaret Lomas, founder, Destiny
