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What Is The State Of Play for the Noosa Property Market?

What is the state of play in the Noosa Property market today?

Putting aside the hype about $20m trophy homes, a majority of properties sell for between $1.3m and $3m.  So on average family homes, Noosa remains cheaper than both Melbourne and Sydney. 

There is no doubt things have changed.  Properties are up 50-100% on what they were just 2-3 years ago.  

We are off the peak frenzy of panic buying, properties are taking longer to sell, but they are still selling and generally in line with expected/appraised sale value.   

However, buyers watching the media are telling me they are holding off waiting for the crash.

Those buyers will sadly miss out.  

Why?

• Because a vast majority of our buyers are cash buyers unaffected by interest rate increases.
• Because Noosa remains a safe and desirable lifestyle location to raise a family and/or retire to.
• Because the Northern migration continues and the Federal government has approved more than 500,000 visas for business investors and workers to come to Australia.
• Listings remain at a low level.
• Noosa remains cheaper than southern states for the most part.

Half-a-million people are heading our way and they will need somewhere to live.  No, they are not comIng to Noosa but it will free up others wanting to leave Victoria and New South Wales to sell and do so.

I cannot reiterate strongly enough that the negative media headlines are in error.  We are not crashing, nor can I see how the market can drop significantly, with there being a shortage in housing and ongoing demand from southern buyers particularly. 

The biggest challenge we have in giving buyers and sellers advice at this time is the mixed messages in media as to whether the market is actually dropping, flatlining or continuing to grow!  

Firstly, there is no one single Noosa market.  There is Noosa Heads, which is different to Noosaville, which is different to Sunshine Beach, which is different to Tewantin…and the Sunshine Coast is entirely different again.  But Noosa is generally encapsulated as a single market in the data.  And very often included as part of Sunshine Coast data for media purposes. 

And sometimes, the data out of RP Data and Pricefinder, the two main data houses agents rely upon, can be in conflict.  Or at least the media articles quoting them are...

If you just read the headlines, you will get a terribly skewed perception of what is really happening. 

For example, Sunshine Coast News published a story on the 2nd of September 2022 entitled Property values have dived dramatically on the sunshine Coast.  

And went on to say that the latest insight from property experts CoreLogic show house prices in the region experienced a 4.5 per cent decline since the market peaked a few months ago and a 2.2 per cent fall from July to August. 

The sensationalism of such tiny declines (if they are in fact real) is frustrating.  “Houses that were worth a median price of almost $1.117m in April have lost significant value to sit at $1.066m in August, which is about $50,000 less”.  Quelle horreur!  

The Courier Mail published on 5th November 2022 an article called Sunshine Coast, Noosa property:  New data reveals house and unit values.  

“New data reveals the value of Sunshine Coast and Noosa homes as interest rate increases start to bite and the property market slows,” it claims under this headline.  

To then go on to say…”REA Group property data showed that Tanawha was the only Sunshine Coast or Noosa suburb to record a decrease in value, of 1.8 per cent, between October 2021 and October 2022.  Sunshine Coast and Noosa homes mostly remained more valuable in October 2022 than at the same time last year.”

And on December 7th 2022, Domain published an article entitled Queensland’s Sunshine Coast sees a post-COVID population and house-price boom. 

“Property prices in Noosa have skyrocketed, with houses in Noosa Heads rising an astonishing 152 per cent over the last five years, and 41.4 per cent in the last year alone, to a median of $2,212,500, according to the latest Domain House Price Report. Apartment prices, meanwhile, increased 136 per cent over the same period, and 20.9 per cent in the last 12 months, to $1.3 million.”

So let’s look at the detail. These are the actual figures of sale data from RP Data for Noosa Heads only, house median sale price growth for one year, and 8 years.  

NOOSA HEADS HOUSE MEDIAN SALE PRICE GROWTH, 12 MONTHS (RP Data)

NOOSA HEADS HOUSE MEDIAN SALE PRICE GROWTH LONG TERM TRENDS (RP Data)

There is not a single month of decline in values to August 2022 (the most recent of figures as there is a 3 month lag in data from the state government to data companies). 

However....

Pricefinder tells a slightly different story.

You can understand our frustration as agents as to which data to rely upon.  And it is understandable there are mixed messages in the media, if the data houses cannot agree on median price growth, let alone number of properties sold. 

And don’t get me started on the quality of data and negative sentiment from SQM!  They certainly can't predict the future and I sincerely wish they would stop trying.  

So how do we assess the market to give meaningful advice to sellers and buyers? 

We do computer-based analysis within Pricefinder and RP Data, but we also have enormous local knowledge, a track record of sales in all market conditions, we monitor the real estate portals, and know our neighbourhoods. 

Further, we look at the drivers of the market - such as immigration, interest rate movement, consumer confidence and available land and cost of new builds. 

Of note, Queensland’s  Sunshine Coast now accounts for the largest share of total net population flow from capital cities to regional Australia at 37 per cent, significantly more than migration to regional NSW and VIC.  And we are not "making" any new land in Noosa last time I checked. 

This inflow of population and demand for Noosa properties continues, so for this reason, and the figures above, I do not see a crash in our stars. 

If you are a buyer sitting on your hands waiting for the prices to drop, you are going to miss out.  

I said this in April 2020 when the so-called experts were declaring a 30-40% price crash was going to occur before the end of 2020.  They were wrong then and they are wrong now.  

PS If you would like to keep tabs on the actual data for your own suburb, subscribe here https://www.noosa4sale.com.au/newsletter to receive by email the quarterly market updates from RP Data.