Upcoming ‘hotspot’ falls flat
It was widely touted as the next best thing for investors pushed out of Sydney and Melbourne, but new data has revealed a disappointing outlook for this city.
Domain.com.au’s latest Price Report has revealed that Brisbane’s property market returned a disappointing performance over the September quarter.
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House prices rose just 0.8 per cent over the quarter to $497,143, while unit prices fell by 0.6 per cent to $362,737.
Year-on-year growth to September 2015 stands at 3.6 per cent for houses and -5.6 per cent for units.
The unit market result marks the fifth consecutive quarter of falling prices and it doesn't look like things are about to get any better, according to Domain’s chief economist Andrew Wilson.
“Brisbane’s probably been the disappointment this year, and it may be the surprise packet. There was the prospect that Brisbane would clearly be first place behind Melbourne and Sydney for price growth, but it’s just gone nowhere," he said.
“Without a pick-up through the December quarter, there’s the prospect that prices will actually flat line through 2015. It certainly looks like price growth will certainly be well below the levels of last year when they were up by six per cent, nearly seven per cent."
The market is lacking momentum for price growth, according to Mr Wilson, with growth far too concentrated in individual suburbs to result in significant increases city-wide.
“The market continues to, I guess we could say, move a little sideways. [There’s] no real momentum for price growth and I think it’s just a lack of enthusiasm, particularly amongst the lower-priced areas out in Brisbane, out to the west and the north and down to the south of the Brisbane area. I think that’s again an underperformance by the local economy which is keeping concerns over job security and unemployment, and keeping confidence subdued. There are still high listing numbers in those outer suburbs of Brisbane.”
Without a change in economic prospects, the Brisbane market is unlikely to undergo the post-GFC recovery many had anticipated, Mr Wilson said.
“Without a significant pick-up in the economic prospects, particularly of Queensland, there won’t be the revival that many have predicted at that level," he added.
"There’s no surprise that the resource states of Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, their capital cities have been real underperformers and there’s no doubt that there’s been significant job losses in the coal industry in central Queensland, and that’s really worked its way into generalised economic performance in Queensland.”
The news of Brisbane’s disappointing price growth comes after Domain reported that the city's rents had remained static in the year to September.
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