QLD Is it Townsville's time???

Will $200k get anything decent in those areas at castle hill or near the beach? Prefer a 1-2 bedder in an old block with low body corp which needs some renovations.

 

Should be able to get a 2 bedder
Might be a bessa block though

 

Sorry didn't have time to look at real estate, was on enforced time out ☺. Good luck with it though, I could have happily stayed there.

 

Thanks Jen.
Paid $8000 strata onsurance for block 7 inits in Townsville.
Rang Suncorp and can do for $2434.
Needless to say am making the change.

Couple of months ago.. changed house insurance from $2400 to $800. Great saving with Youi.

 

That's great, Adelaide! Almost $7K a year difference for a few phone calls!

Thanks for the tip re. Youi. I'll look into them myself.

Cheers

Jen

 

Sorry, Townsville Bulletin has gone subscription-based now, which is frustrating when you want to share articles. To access the full article you need to select the heading and search google.

This is the text from the article:

First residents moving in to apartments at former hospital

TONY RAGGATT, Townsville Bulletin
December 20, 2016 12:00am
Subscriber only

THE first residents will soon feel the cool breezes from the comfort of their luxury apartments created inside the former Townsville General Hospital at North Ward.

Developer Robert Zammit said the first owner had begun moving in last week and others would follow in coming weeks as extensive fit-outs were completed.

The building, Fulton Gardens stage two, was a landmark development featuring some of Townsville’s largest and most luxurious apartments, he said. “We have created a beautiful product. It will be a landmark for Townsville,” Mr Zammit said.

A total of 28 apartments are being created in the former A block fronting Eyre St, a six-level building listed on the state heritage register because of its significance to Townsville and its 1940s modernist architecture.

Mr Zammit said 17 of the apartments had been sold for prices up to more than $1 million with the residences measuring from 310sqm to 440sqm and larger than many single-dwelling homes.

“They are double the size of any other units in town,” Mr Zammit said.

“The buyers are all owner-occupiers and well-known professionals.”

They included lawyers, surgeons and retired people.

The fit-outs were extremely luxurious and tailored to suit individual needs, Mr Zammit said.

One included an interior herb garden developed on a stainless steel wall with its own irrigated plumbing and light source.

Other apartments had been made with extra large doorways for easier wheelchair access.

The project is the culmination of more than a decade of work to redevelop the larger Townsville General Hospital site which has been transformed into a mix of commercial, residential and health-related uses.

“It’s been an extremely difficult road because of the interruption caused to the market by the GFC and the changes in council and the treatment of the site,” Mr Zammit said.

Mr Zammit said there had been seven or eight changes in planning directors and three or four mayors over the life of the development.

Townsville builder M Baker Building Contractors began the redevelopment of A block last year.

They expect to continue on site for some time yet as fit-outs are completed and more work is done to the site, including landscaping.

Mr Zammit said landscaping could not be done until the city moved out of level three water restrictions.


Cheers

Jen

 

Check out the thread on Why Brisbane did not Boom, perhaps there are some comparisons I don't know.
The forum is about education, we all have opinions and they could differ, but we are playing with money here and we don't get this time back, its important to look at market conditions and the triggers that make markets a good proposition.

MTR

 

Hi Jen Jen

Interesting to see there is a more positive vibe on the ground up north . Townsville has had a rough time in recent years .

It's somewhere that I keep an eye on . We did well in the last cycle . We bought a house in Heatley for 152 which we subsequentally sold for around 300 . We had a very good property manager who was recommended by another Townsville local sunfish / thommo .

When we bought ( early -mid 2000's ) , part of the attraction was that compared to many of the other northern cities it had a diversified economy with manufacturing , mining , defence , education and much of the government infrastructure was based there .

Main issue I have at the moment , which I also have with most of the Queensland costal cities is the vacancy rate which according to sqm is 6.4 % . Not sure where that is and whether it's generalised or more localised .

It may well be that this represents the bottom of the market , and we've bought in Sydney when we thought it was the bottom of the market , so I'm not adverse to trying to buy at the bottom of the market , but in the past Queensland costal cities typically follow Brisbane's boom and while Brisbane is starting to move its not booming .

If I was buying in Townsville now it would be because I specifically want a place in Townsville and now represents a good to buy something cheaply . Maybe a winter bolt hole on the strand , an alternative to palm cove or port Douglass .

How much would a nice 2-3 bedder in a beach front position cost ? How much would they rent for and what's the vacancies like in that area .

Cliff

 

I use Youi for my ppor in Cairns and reduced the premium significantly to a little over $2000 from memory, Allianz quoted over $5000 in 2012 after Yasi. Absolute robbery. I think some of the bigger insurers must have been over exposed in NQ/FNQ.

The change in Suncorp's policy for smaller unit blocks should be a game changer in theory but many BCs don't seem to be aware of the change? It should make investing in small unit blocks viable again as the gross yields are actually really strong.

Re Townsville the economy is definitely diverse but it doesn't have a strong tourism sector which is probably one of the few area's of the regional Qld economy which is going really well at present. It must be bottom of the cycle though and due for improvement.

 

I would really recommend not investing in Townsville. Vacancy rates are around 6% and the one thing that's generating the current hype, the headquarters of the Adani mine, isn't going to go ahead in my opinion, contrary to what you hear in the media.
Even if the mine was to go ahead, it's going to be a short term to medium term boost with India already talking about scaling back coal imports.
I don't work in the real estate space, but I work in the energy space instead, which has brought me to the definite conclusion that this is about as safe as Kodak was with the advent of digital photography.

 

Hi spludgey

I couldn't agree with you more, and do not think that investors would put their money into an area based purely on mining these days, although the Adani announcements have definitely got a few ears pricked up. Last I heard from an Agent on the ground in Townsville, Adani management were looking for houses to buy for their people. Can you give a bit more insight into why you think it isn't going to go ahead?

Cheers

Jen

 

Okay, so RenewEconomy is very far from unbiased, but here is an article that shows that India's (draft) energy plan does not include any new coal. While this would be a barrier for the Adani coal mine (as the coal is for export to India), it's not the only barrier. It also doesn't make any economic sense. Right now wind is cheaper than new coal, plus you don't have the same supply risks that you do with coal. I think it's fair to say that if we plan on sticking to the Paris agreement to limit global warming to 2C (which India is a signatory to) then mechanisms such as carbon trading or a carbon tax is highly likely in many countries around the world within the next decade.

There's also not insignificant opposition in Australia to the $1b "loan". This would be unlikely to ever be paid back as Adani could just get a daughter company to declare bankruptcy and take this debt with them.

Then there are the question marks about alleged corruption.

All in all, I just don't think that it's a prudent investment and that's why I can't see it ever eventuating. And yes, I'm aware that the Adani boss said that they could absorb the costs of the mine if it turned out to not be financially viable, but just because they can doesn't mean that they'll be silly enough to do so.

 

Adani aside, there are a lot of other developments going on in Townsville that are increasing confidence. There's been a lot in the pipeline over the last year, but I think the real pickup has been since the announcement of the Stadium funding. Latest market stats in my earlier post suggest to me that the property market moved off the bottom of the cycle around September 2016, although there are still plenty of risks to be aware of.

For those interested, the attachment is a compilation of headlines from the Townsville Bulletin in just the last year (2016). They're mostly subscription only articles, so you'll need to copy and paste headlines into your browser to read the full articles. However, after several years of doom and gloom, I think the headlines give some insight re. the positive vibe we are seeing in Townsville at the moment.

What do you think?

Cheers

Jen

 

For me it's watch this space , along with most places in Queensland outside Brisbane .

Cliff

 

This article gives a snapshot of developments across regional Queensland.

Queensland's 2017 will be shaped outside Brisbane

Jen

 

Thanks so much for this, I'm looking at insurance on a large block of regional units myself right now

 

Adani own the power plants and thus wont be selling any coal. They are also constructing new plants as we speak.
I would be surprised if they didnt use these plants because wind is now cheaper.

Did you include the costs for energy storage in your assumption that wind is cheaper? Wind doesnt blow 24/7

 

I'm aware of that. I'm also aware of the fact that they're constructing a wind farm in Australia.
There's also a bit of a nationalistic push in India, which will make it harder politically to import coal.

Yes, wind isn't base load, but that you need storage with it is a furphy that's being pushed by the coal lobby. As long as it's just part of the mix and and not the sole provider of electricity, it doesn't matter that much as you can always ramp up hydro and gas to fill any gaps left by wind. Especially on a big grid. I don't know too much about their national grid, but in a country the size of India, you'll always have the wind blowing somewhere, so if it's a single national grid, then intermittency will be even less of an issue.
So I don't believe that storage really has to be factored in at the levels that we're talking about. And unlike with coal, nor does transporting fuel 10,000km or the likely advent of a carbon tax.

 

Spludgey,
Adani are keen on renewables as evidenced by their solar projects.
If wind, solar, hydro, gas etc was really cheaper then i see no reason why they would be interested in coal

 

One of the big problems for Townsville, Mackay, Gladstone etc, is that the first home buyers cannot buy secondhand. There are some absolutely ridiculouse crazy prices in these area for near new (and old homes) but first home buyers cannot get into them. The rents are low in these places relatively speaking, os why would you spend 380 grand on a new build house when the house beiside all ready built a couple of years ago is 300 grand.