The Year That Has Been

Ray White Rural Queensland has noticed the Rural and Rural Lifestyle market has seen many changes in 2016 with the market generally seeing an upswing in buyer confidence. The high demand for agricultural commodities especially beef and the significant winter rainfall that fell throughout much of Western QLD and NSW has contributed to this confidence and as a result seen many large scale property transactions take place in 2016.

The buoyant residential market combined with the agricultural market has transferred through to rural lifestyle properties in South East Qld. This has seen an increase in transactions happening across multiple price points and types of lifestyle property. Sales from as low as a few thousand dollars have occurred within 2 hours of Brisbane, for example a 5 acre property at Gilla sold for $6,600 recently which will be used for camping on weekends. We have also seen an increase in transactions of property in the $1 million to $2million price range.The Brisbane Valley where there has been very few sales above $1 million in the last few years has recently seen multiple sales ranging from $1.2 million to $1.4million for lifestyle properties. One of these sales is “The Lookout” a 40 acre country estate at Mount Mee sold at Auction for $1.375 million, 40 inspections in a 4 week period. Jez McNamara and Barry Quinn were very pleased with the response to the marketing and numbers of genuine buyers through the open homes. Just South of Beaudesert, Cave Rock Cottages sold for prior to auction. Andrew Goodall said he conducted in excess of 20 inspections from 25 enquiries.

There has also been several sales in South East Qld of larger more commercial agricultural properties. These include horticultural, cropping and grazing properties. Several notable sales include “Milford Rocks” $3.3 million at Toogoolawah an approximately 5,000 acre cattle property, “St Noets” a 4000 acre cattle property just west of Gympie for $3 million, “Avocavale” a cropping and cattle property at Aratula for $5million and several macadamia orchards in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland ranging from $2.8 to $3.6 million. Peter Douglas recently marketed a quality avocado orchard in Northern NSW which received strong interest from both national and international buyers, “this strong interest from quality buyers is representative of what we have seen across the market this year and it seems set to continue into 2017”.

The broader rural market has seen many significant sales this year. In Blackall, Bruce Douglas managed the sale process of Northampton Downs and Inverness which sold for a combined value of $27.5million at Auction. 16 Queensland and NSW families registered to bid at the Auction and 2 Australian families have now expanded their holdings.

Bruce, Jez, Peter, Barry and Andrew all have noticed that with the properties they have marketed in 2016 that close to 60% of all enquiries have inspected the property. Jez McNamara commented “provided properties are marketed well in print media buyers are making the effort to inspect, this is evident in the rural and lifestyle properties Ray White Rural Queensland/Brisbane have sold this year across all market segments and we see no reason this will change in 2017”.