How this popular tourist destination became an investors’ paradise
- By Peter Gordon
- •
- 07 Dec, 2021
We’re used to thinking of Tropical North Queensland as a laid-back, languid kind of place, but with a surge of interstate migration and a huge investment in infrastructure, it’s fast outpacing its leisurely reputation.
Take a walk around Cairns, for instance.
There, the Cairns Convention Centre is undergoing a massive $176 million renovation and extension, the $28 million revitalisation of the esplanade is finished and the Boardwalk Social by Crystalbrook, a new 350-seat food, drink and entertainment hub, is buzzing.
Nearby, the city has Australia’s first newly built aquarium in the last 18 years, with room for events of up to 200 guests, as well as two new hotels and one refurbished.
Further north, in Port Douglas, Wildlife Habitat has a new crocodile arena, ready to seat 300 for a banquet and to cater for 600 at cocktail functions.
It’s all part of a determined bid to position the Tropical North as a major conference and business hub for Australian companies who might no longer be so keen to go overseas.
“It will lead to a lot more visitors, more jobs and it’ll be terrific for investors generally,” says Rosie Douglas, general manager at Tourism Tropical North Queensland.
“Cairns is still very affordable for anyone coming from a capital city to buy here, and prices are booming.
“Pre-COVID, we had three million visitors a year, and we’ll soon have that again with so many amazing tourism experiences.
“At the moment the Cairns Regional Council is also running a campaign to have more people move here, called Choose Cairns, and the city is just so liveable.”
The latest figures certainly support her case. House prices in the Cairns LGA are up 10.3 per cent compared to this time last year at $460,000, on Domain Group figures.
Similarly, in the Douglas Shire to the north, an area that includes Port Douglas, it’s risen 16.5 per cent to $530,000.
With a rental vacancy rate of 0.4 per cent, rents are growing healthily, too.
In Cairns, they rose 9.1 per cent in the year to a median of $400 a week, delivering a handsome yield of 5.7 per cent, and in Douglas, they jumped 11.3 per cent to $445, a yield of 5.5 per cent.
“There’s an exceptionally tight vacancy rate at the moment, which has been driven mainly by the lack of unit development,” says Peter Hanrahan, manager of real estate agents Cairns Property Office.
“Most of our properties are also going to owner-occupiers just now, which makes it even tighter. But it means good returns for investors and, with the new infrastructure that’s been going in and the borders re-opening for tourists, the local economy will rebound too.”
Cairns mortgage broker Nathan Baumgart of Loan Market points to more projects underway, such as the imminent conversion of the former Bunnings into a new $6.8 million Screen Queensland film and TV studio.
With a rental vacancy rate of 0.4 per cent, rents are growing healthily, too. In Cairns, they rose 9.1 per cent in the year to a median of $400 a week, delivering a handsome yield of 5.7 per cent, and in Douglas, they jumped 11.3 per cent.
“Obviously, if there’s so much money being spent in the area, it really encourages good returns for investors,” he says.
“We also have a lot of people from Melbourne and Sydney buying properties here – often sight-unseen.”
Article courtesy Domain 10/11/21
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Sydneysiders and Melburnians, put aside your equally outstanding flat whites for a moment. Stop bickering about whether great beaches beat cool laneways (they do) and desist from debating whether all baristas require waxed moustaches (ideally).
Because Brisbane is closing in on the title of Australia’s best city, and we must join forces to keep this subtropical upstart in its place.
Time magazine recently named Brisvegas on its “World’s Greatest Places” list, and omitted our cities. It’s a huge shock (and who knew they still published Time magazine?). But they might be onto something.
Time points to the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which will be hosted in the maroon metropolis. Brisbane will do a fine job, even though it’ll baffle the world when rugby league is added to the schedule and Queensland is allowed to field its own team.
Time’s most radical claim is that Brisbane is worth visiting now, but tourism is surging. Not only did Lin-Manuel Miranda recently drop in to catch Hamilton , but hundreds of Hamilfans flew up to watch his interview with Leigh Sales (presumably unaware that it would subsequently arrive on iView for free).
A leading local agent has appraised each side of these duplex's to be worth $665k on completion and rent for $495 per week. So that is massive potentail instant equity of up to $390K on completion, which is incredibly hard to find.