“Eighty to 90 per cent of my transactions over the last three to six months alone have all been from buyers either in Melbourne or in Sydney, which is just a phenomenal statistic.”
Mr Stevens said local prices represented “outstanding” value for money.
“What a million dollars here can buy you — opposed to what it would buy you in Sydney and Melbourne — is almost two for one,” he said.
“We are at all-time lows, record lows, in the volume of stock that we have to sell … we do not have enough to sell and meet the demand that is currently coming from Sydney and Melbourne.
“That’s not only on the sales division, it’s also being seen across in the rentals division as well, which as I’ve said is exploding at the same time.”
He said demand was strong for all types of properties.
“Whether it’s low, mid or high, it seems to be the same story all round — we simply just do not have enough to sell,” Mr Stevens said.
“Our vendors that we are trying to get onto the market are simply saying ‘well why would I sell, what am I going to do with the money, you know it’s not really earning anything for me in the bank’.”
Regions attract COVID-19 refugees
Russel Duncan and his partner Rick Seidel lived in Sydney for nine years, but packed up everything about five weeks ago to move to Townsville.
“We came for a vacation 12 weeks ago and that set the entire ball in motion to actually move here,” Mr Duncan said.
“The weather was fabulous, the people were amazing, real estate was brilliantly priced.
COVID has brought quality of your life and the work-life ratio far more prominently into people’s minds — there’s certainly a big swing to moving north.
The couple is living in a small residency attached to the back of their business that sells Christmas ornaments.
They are waiting for a particular rental to become untenanted in the new year so they can lease it, with the option of buying, after selling their Sydney home for over $1 million.
“We are out of Sydney — lock, stock and barrel,” he said.
Rents spike amid unprecedented demand
Interstate migration was also forcing up the cost of rentals.
Cairns real estate agent Nicole Craike, from the Twomey Schriber Property Group, said they were averaging around 3,000 inquiries a month — twice as many as last year.
“Fifty per cent of those people are from interstate,” she said.
Ms Craike said with a vacancy rate of around 1 per cent, supply and demand was pushing prices up by at least 10 per cent.
“Quite dramatically, and quite quickly I think, a lot of tenants are quite shocked with where rents are going throughout Cairns,” she said.
Most of our rental properties are getting multiple applications, sight unseen.
“They are offering more than the asking price and certainly offering more rent upfront.
“We have some tenants offering to pay 12 months rent upfront and still not getting accepted with properties.”
The agency was concerned people were being forced to couch-surf or look for stop-gap accommodation.
“They are booking into hotels and a lot of our caravan parks are now full for months in advance,” she said.
Call for government action
The REIQ said governments needed to encourage the construction of new houses to keep up with demand.
“It’s important that we see local government and state government doing more to create some new housing supply so that demand can be met with adequate supply levels,” Ms Mercorella said.
She also renewed calls for stamp duty reform.
“We know that acts as a financial impost for many — it means that some of us remain in houses that are either too small or too big for us, simply because we don’t want to incur and pay significant stamp duties.”
She said she would like to see stamp duty reviewed on the whole.
“It’s well and truly overdue,” she said.
“Of course we have seen both New South Wales and Victoria more recently talking about stamp duty reform, so certainly we’d like to see stamp duty on the whole reviewed.
But in particular, we think a great starting point is for older Australians we’d like to see stamp duty abolished, to really encourage people who may be empty nesters living in a large property, on a good-sized block of land, moving into something that is perhaps more age appropriate so that property can be freed up for perhaps a family with a number of children.