If Student Accomm / AirBNB is dead, what to build during Covid?

Gday gang...

I’ve had a fair bit of success developing short term tenancy properties in Byron and made my first few bucks by converting family homes to houses for 6 students on the cheap...

Fortunately I don’t have much exposure to property market at the moment as I’m retired but obviously both these property plays are dead in the short term (hope everyone can hang in there)

Thinking optimistically - what can do well during a lockdown phase of 1-2 years which looks likely? I was thinking regionals with lower cost of living for remote workers?

 

this was moved to a much quieter forum but I reckon it should be as much ‘where to buy’ as we can talk about regionals vs cosmopolitans... interested in people’s thoughts

 

Air-conditioned, hermetically sealed virus bunkers.

 

no worries Simon, maybe that should be specified as it doesn’t appear that way with all the city threads... like Brisbane, bargains in Perth etc...

Thanks for all you do on here. Cheers

 

It might be too early to tell.
HMO/Share houses will always have their place for affordable housing but short term letting is as you say probably quite dead as there is no tourist market.
In my crystal ball I'm not seeing a lockdown for 2 years. 1 year maybe but I think it will get looser and looser however it will be quite awhile before certain countries will be allowed to just fly into Aus and wander around without quarantine.

During these phases you might look at how you can add value to current stock (or new stock) like building a house behind a house (retain and build) to increase the yield on a project.

 

We are building masses of NDIS properties around the country.
People are scared about demand.

I picked up 12 approved participants as a trial with a provider who has 400 people this morning. Demand is enormous

 

We continue to deliver dual occ houses + granny flats in larger NSW regionals within reasonable striking distance of Sydney and with already very low vacancy rates around the 1% -1.5% range ( Orange and Bathurst had been the focus, but Goulburn is the primary focus right now) and even as we deliver several of them into the markets this week, next week and over the next few weeks, tenants are already in place for all of them at MORE than we thought when we started them.... They will produce in the vicinity of @ 15K CF+ at current rates . You could have both the house or the granny flat vacant for almost 5 months and still be CF Neutral


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Are you more or less concerned about future rental demand under 12-24 months of lockdown?

 

Vacancy rates are 1.1% in Goulburn ..... and Goulburn hasn't really seen any new builds in over 10 years as council just wasn't allowing much to be done. And what little has been built in recent years hasn't been for the rental market. Hence the ongoing low vacancy rates. So we feel pretty good about how things are positioned.
So far, all the properties nearing completion have seen tenants being signed up before hand over, and paying more than we asked/expected.... our managing agents are reporting that motels and serviced apartments are pretty full and are charging 140-150 per night, so there has been no shortage of demand for what we have been making available thus far. There is always a possibility that could change, but with 15K or surplus income being generated by these properties, even if it did change our owners could afford to forego almost 300 per week and still be CF neutral. That's a lot of firepower and safety net at their disposal, offering quite an advantage over local rental competition with nowhere near that sort of cash flow and with much older single dwellings to offer.