Property guru Simon Pressley reveals huge change across the Wide Bay
Across the Gympie region, the Fraser Coast and Bundaberg, enormous changes have taken place, and are still taking place. Read what this means for the 260,000 people who live there.
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Surging rent prices, soaring house values and a population explosion are among the extraordinary changes the Wide Bay has undergone in the past three decades, new figures reveal.
Data provided by real estate research hub Propertyology has painted a startling picture about how Gympie, the Fraser Coast and Bundaberg region have evolved in the past decade.
Some of the changes, including the pressure now on the Wide Bay rental market as a whole, was labelled “extraordinary” by the company’s head researcher Simon Pressley.
“Over the 12-years since 2010, the combined populations of Bundaberg, Gympie, Hervey Bay and Maryborough have increased by 30,600, yet the combined volume of properties advertised for rent declined from 473 in 2010 to 168 currently,” Mr Pressley said.
“The state’s inability to attract enough property investors year after year after year culminated in the price of asking rents accelerating from 2017.
“The pressure now is seriously intense.”
A three-bedroom home would likely cost a renter from $450-$500 each week; this was about $150 higher than in 2020.
“Joining the dots of future rental supply-demand metrics leaves Propertyology anticipating that asking rents could increase by an additional $100 per week over the next 12-months,” Mr Pressley said.
The strong local economy and migration patterns would keep adding to rental demand at a time when the rates of rental supply were likely to reduce, he said.
“Within the last few months, the Queensland government has further discouraged property investors through the introduction of yet another layer of rental reforms along with a new land tax.
“This has potential to cause thousands of existing investors in Queensland to sell up, thereby further depleting the size of the rental pool. It is not going to be pretty.”
Mr Pressley said the rental issues were part of a demographic change that had put the Wide Bay, with its population of 260,000, on par with some the country’s largest metropolitan hubs.
“Its population is much the same in size as Geelong and Hobart, the 10th and 11th largest cities in Australia,” Mr Pressley.
He said the value of real estate in the region increased five-fold between 1990 and 2020.
The average price of property at the start of that period was about $70,000; by its end it was $350,000.
It had surged even higher in the two years since, with a standard home in the Wide Bay costing an average of $500,000.
The region was a “magnet” for internal migration too.
“While five of eight capital cities (including Sydney and Melbourne) produced a net population decline from internal migration over the 12-years to 2021, Bundaberg (2.8 per cent), Gympie (11.3 per cent) and Fraser Coast (13.7 per cent) proved to be strong migration magnets, collectively contributing 21,045 to the total population growth,” Mr Pressley said.
Middle aged Australians moving in the search of a better lifestyle often made Gympie and the Fraser Coast their choice, he said.
“Analysis of the last three Census periods confirms Gympie (was 40 and is now 48) and Fraser Coast (from 44 to 51) have seen significant increases in their median household age,” Mr Pressley said.
Home ownership rates across the Wide Bay were among the among the best in Australia.
“Gympie (82 per cent), Fraser Coast and South Burnett (both 80 per cent) are well above the national average of 74 per cent,” Mr Pressley said.
In comparison only slightly more than two-thirds of homes (68 per cent) in Brisbane and Sydney were owner-occupied.
Melbourne’s rate sat at the national average, while Bundaberg’s was three percentage points higher at 77 per cent.
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