‘Ridiculous’: High demand for rural land drives prices up

‘As soon as we list them, they’re sold’: Cattle listings in the North Burnett and Wide Bay are hard to come by, with clients lining up for the chance to buy.

CLIENTS are lining up for the chance to buy rural property in the North Burnett and Wide Bay regions, with listings proving hard to come by.

Owner of First National Real Estate Childers Phil Dowling said the markets been “ridiculous” with how busy it's been over the last six months.

“As soon as we list them, they’re sold,” Mr Dowling said.

“We’ve got a big list of buyers, we just can't find the properties for them.”

Mr Dowling said he believes the recent surge is due to the rise in cattle prices.

“It probably happened years ago when the cattle prices rose and a lot of properties that were on the market all sold,” he said.

“I really would like some more rural listings - grazing properties.”

While residential real estate in towns like Gayndah is seeing city-goers make the move due to COVID-19, Mr Dowling doesn’t believe this is the case for rural.

“COVID has really made our residential and rural residential market move and move pretty quick,” he said.

“There's different places where we’ve had two or three people wanting to buy the one property, and there's always someone disappointed.”

Mr Dowling said he is seeing this high demand particularly for grazing properties as well.

“I’m finding with rural properties the same thing, I had four offers on the one property.”

Mr Dowling said this is having a flow on effect as he has seen the prices lift this year.

“Naturally when there's less on the market it drives the prices up as well.”

“Its interesting especially when they say we’re in a recession.

“It really hasn't made a difference to our market, I’ll tell you now.”

With very few listings on the market, clients are being forced to offer above the asking price.

“They all sell and someone will say can you ring them and say I'm prepared to pay more,” Mr Dowling said.

“Someone doesn't wanna miss out on it so they’ll put in an offer high than the list price.”

Mr Dowling believes with the borders slowly opening up, more people will be moving to Queensland.

“People are moving to the country areas now and we will get a bigger influx soon when Victoria opens,” he said.

“Now would be the time to buy.”

Originally published as