By Guest Blogger, Terry Ryder, founder,
hotspotting.com.au and propertyU
The Sunshine Coast has been touted as an excellent area which is affordable, has an attractive lifestyle and provides a family friendly community for both homeowners and property investors.
But what lies beneath the surface? Is this area suitable for property investors and how can they take advantage of such a market when investing remotely wanting to move from Interstate.
Anyone seeking an investment likely to achieve dramatic growth in values needs to find a market in the early stages of major transition.
The greatest creator of this kind of large-scale change in a local market is infrastructure spending.
The best example of this happening in Australian in the past decade is the Sunshine Coast Region.
The Sunshine Coast has been, and still remains, the prime example of an economy transformed through proactive action based on spending on new infrastructure and the creation of new industries in the local economy.
Over a period of five or six years, the Sunshine Coast has been transformed from a tourism town into a regional city of national (and indeed international) importance.
Anyone who bought early in this growth cycle will have likely seen their property’s value double in the past 3-4 years.
The top end of the Sunshine Coast market in particular saw spectacular growth in values from 2019 to 2022.
Sunshine Beach, Sunrise Beach and Minyama are some of the high-end suburbs where values went to unimagined levels in that period. At Sunshine Beach, the median house price has risen 150% in the past five years and the 10-year capital growth average is 17% per year, one of the highest in the nation.
A significant factor in driving that outcome was the new medical precinct created around the $2 billion Sunshine Coast University Hospital. That kind of infrastructure is often a gamechanger for a local property market because it not only creates jobs and economic activity during construction, but it creates even more once operational.
The SCUH was completed in 2017 as part of a larger $5 billion health hub development, which is ongoing.
This new medical precinct has attracted medical specialists from other parts of Australia and from overseas to create homes on the Sunshine Coast while working in this major new facility.
But there’s been a lot more in the Sunshine Coast infrastructure revolution.
Sunshine Coast Airport has been upgraded and is now an international airport. The International Broadband Network subsea cable means the region now has the fastest internet links to Asia of anywhere on the east coast of Australia. The region’s largest shopping centre, Sunshine Plaza, has undergone a $440 Million expansion.
The Bruce Highway which connects Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast and beyond has had a $1 billion upgrade recently, with more upgrades under way – including the ongoing $2.4 billion project to expand the motorway link north to Gympie and beyond.
A $550 million upgrade of the rail link from Brisbane to Nambour is under way.
And the infrastructure revolution is far from over. The Sunshine Coast Regional Council is doing something unique in Australia – it’s creating a Central Business District from scratch, providing a 50ha site (a former golf course) in Maroochydore and engaging with major companies to create new office, retail, residential and hospitality buildings amid parkland.
It’s a long-term work in progress but SunCentral is already a vibrant precinct with cafes, restaurants and boutique shops.
More needs to happen because not only is the Sunshine Coast one of Australia’s leading population growth centres, but the region will have a major slice of the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics.
The key project will be the proposed rail link to from the existing Brisbane-Nambour line to the coastal strip, with the terminus at SunCentral. This is estimated to cost over $3 billion.
The Sunshine Coast Region continues to be one of the nation’s leading growth regions, with the 2021 Census population of 346,000 projected to rise to more than 500,000 by 2041.
The local property market offers median house prices ranging from $650,000 at Nambour and around $750,000 at Sippy Downs and Caloundra West, through $1.2 million at Coolum and Warana, to top end locations like Minyama and Sunshine Beach, which have median prices well above $2 million.
There are high sales volumes in the apartment markets, including over 400 annual sales at Maroochydore and more than 200 each in Mooloolaba, Buderim and Noosaville.
Median apartment prices range from the $400,000s at Sippy Downs and Nambour, through the $600,000s in coastal suburbs such as Mooloolaba, Marcoola and Alexandra Headland, up to more than $1 million at Noosa Heads and Sunshine Beach.
Rental demand is strong, with most Sunshine Coast Region postcodes having vacancy rates below 1%.
To tap into this rapidly growing market, using a local buyers advocate from Propertybuyer makes sense and they can help you and find the best opportunities.
To have one of the friendly Propertybuyer Buyers' Agents to contact you:
or
call us on 1300 655 615 today.
