Flashback: David Koch predicts doom for Gold Coast property market
David ‘Kochie’ Koch was all doom and gloom about the Gold Coast property market in early 2012 — but he’s now convinced the revival is here
History
Don't miss out on the headlines from History. Followed categories will be added to My News.
IT was almost four years ago when finance expert and Sunrise host David Koch called it like he saw it.
The man known as ‘Kochie’ reckoned the Gold Coast property market, along with the Sunshine Coast, was a “property catastrophe” in the making.
His investment outlook in January 2012 was for “slowly deflating residential property values”.
As you can imagine, it didn’t go down well with local real estate agents at the time. Kochie copped a serious spray for his opinion.
FLASHBACK: THE COAST’S MOST COLOURFUL CANDIDATES
But now, it is that honest opinion in the face of flak that will no doubt have him back on the Christmas card list of local agents, he jokes.
This week, Kochie came out and tipped the Gold Coast property market to be one of the best performing in the country come 2016. His forecast comes about a year after he urged people on the hunt for property to put their money into the Gold Coast.
His latest opinion comes on the back of SQM Property research predicting dwelling values to rise between seven to 11 per cent in the next year.
Kochie has a lot of respect for SQM but says property is also not “brain surgery”: “Property is all about supply and demand. When the (post-2008 GFC) crash came on the Gold Coast you could see it coming because a huge amount of stock came on the market.
“Complete towers in places like Broadbeach just went into receivership,” Kochie recalls but says since then and his latter 2012 doomsday prediction the stars have aligned for Gold Coast property.
“Development stopped, no new properties came on, the Aussie dollar starts to fall so Australians are holidaying more at home and overseas. The Gold Coast is a prime tourist destination for locals and you have the Commonwealth Games coming up so the cycle turns.”
With the outlook strong for the Gold Coast, Sydney-based Kochie says the challenge here now is to somehow steer clear of what’s generally been a boom or bust pattern.
“The Gold Coast has always been boom or bust, that’s been the cycle. If it can get over that, that will be terrific for the market.”
Earlier this week, Andrew Bell — who heads Ray White Surfers Paradise Group — said he felt confident the Gold Coast was entering its best period in 20 years since the heyday of the 1980s.
Andrew tells Coast Weekend the Gold Coast also has “outstanding fundamentals” now that are helping bolster confidence in the market. With the local population tipping 700,000, and the economy broadening, the place is becoming far more robust economically, he says.
“The biggest one of all is the difference in prices between us and other markets. There is concern now about Sydney and Melbourne and just how far those markets went.
“There is a substantial difference between us and Sydney and Melbourne and so on — where many of our buyers are coming from.
“The biggest thing they are concerned at is buying in their own locations and this is why they are increasingly looking up our way.”
Andrew says that’s been increasingly apparent for most of 2015 and inquiry from elsewhere continues to climb month on month.
‘The one that got away’: Coast’s most infamous unsolved crime
A man raped multiple women across the Gold Coast and Tweed Heads and murdered a man during a year-long reign of terror before disappearing suddenly. THE TERRIFYING STORY
‘Utterly unforeseeable’: What led to double-stabbing inside Coast home
Two people were found stabbed to death in a northern Gold Coast home in an incident which made headlines around the country before a court was told what really happened.