With property prices soaring, buyers are turning their sights to the regions – and records across the state are being smashed.
New analysis shows that buyers are looking for property gold in regional Queensland, and they are not afraid to drop some serious coin in order to secure their own slice of paradise at a fraction of the price of a waterfront mansion on the Sunshine Coast or an acreage property in the Gold Coast hinterland.
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In the four months to the end of April, 776 Aussie suburbs posted a new record sale price.
Of those, 158 suburbs were in Queensland, which was second only to NSW with 299 suburb records, and 60 of those were in Brisbane and 95 in the regions.
Leading the way with 30 new suburb records was the Sunshine Coast, second only to the Central Coast of NSW with 32 record sales.
Ipswich and Wide Bay also made the top 10 list of suburbs with the most record-breaking sales nationally, according to realestate.com.au, with 20 and 18 record sales respectively.
On Castle Hill, this Townsville mansion with uninterrupted water and island views sold for $6 million – a relative bargain compared to what you can get on the Gold Coast. Picture: Evan Morgan
The vast majority were lifestyle properties offering acreage-style living or stunning water views, often at a fraction of the price of a similar property on the Gold Coast or in the capital.
Up north, a hillside mansion in Townsville set a new price record for the garrison city when it settled for $6 million in February – double the previous record of $3 million set for the city back in 2007.
Bought by 1300 Smiles managing director Daryl Holmes, the Castle Hill mansion with views of the ocean and Magnetic Island had previously been owned by former car king, Adam Carmichael and his wife Daniella.
In Stanthorpe, a fully renovated historic Queenslander set on 30 acres in the heart of wine country sold for $1.46 million, eclipsing its own previous record sales price of $850,000 set back in 2016.
Acreage properties like this one at Stanthorpe were in hot demand during the March quarter
On the Sunshine Coast, a standout acreage property with a luxury home, guesthouse, pool, leisure areas, horse paddocks and a playground at Woombye sold for $2.175 million.
There is plenty of room to socially distance at this Woombye lifetsyle property
While in the Gold Coast hinterland, a new suburb record was set in the Tallebudgera Valley with the $5 million sale of a stunning and secluded acreage property in March.
“When people are buying their own home, they’re willing to pay above market price if they fall in love with it,” Realestate.com.au economist Anne Flaherty said.
“For people who have sold recently, the growth we’ve seen in the market is helping them to, in turn, bring up prices in other areas.
“People are rethinking where they want to live now that proximity to cities isn’t as much of an issue, and they’re thinking about what they can get for the money they would spend in an inner or middle ring suburb.”
This Tallebudgera property is postcard perfect
Closer to Brisbane, suburb records have been set at Woorim (Moreton Bay), Mount Samson (Moreton Bay) and Shailer Park (Logan), to name a few.
At Woorim, on Bribie Island, one of two beach homes on Rickman Parade, which is also locally known as Millionaire’s Row, sold for $2.375 million in March.
The second beach home remains for sale and is due for completion next year.
The sale is $800,000 more than the previous record set at Woorim, also on Rickman Parade, back in 2018.At Mount Samson, a stunning, near-new hilltop retreat sold for $2.8 million earlier this year – $880,000 more than the previous record set in 2017.
This spectacular Mount Samson residence even has the most extravagant granny flat
And in Shailer Park, which typically has a median house sales price of $600,000, two houses on an acreage block sold for $2.05 million in January.
The three top prices for Shailer Park were all recorded between October 14, 2020 and March 20, 2021.
It comes after new data from CoreLogic revealed that house prices had soared in 710 suburbs across Queensland over the last quarter, with 390 of those located outside of the Greater Brisbane area.
Queensland now has 78 million-dollar suburbs across Brisbane, Moreton Bay, the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.
Beyond the populated southeast corner, the most expensive house markets can be found at Palm Cove (Cairns), where the median house price is $708,230, and North Ward (Townsville), which has a median sales price of $677,391, according to CoreLogic.
However, Townsville’s prestige suburb of Castle Hill was not included in the data, with REA Group reporting a median sales price there of $1.065 million.
The Castle Hill house in Townsville sold under the hammer for $1.545m on April 20
The Ryder Report for April, by Simon Pressley of Propertyology, said buyers were “extremely active” across the Queensland market, with the state experiencing its “strongest market” in many years.
The report identified 124 “rising markets” across Brisbane and 157 locations across regional Queensland.
Standout performers include the Sunshine Coast, where 30 of its 41 suburbs are seeing rising sales activity, Townsville, where all 10 of the suburbs surveyed are on the move, the Gold Coast, which has 31 rising markets, Toowoomba, with 11 of its 14 suburbs rising, and Cairns, which was slower to see price growth but is now showing improvements.
