Housing investment provides 200 per cent return over two decades in Alice Springs

HOUSING is providing a solid return on investment in Alice Springs with new figures showing a 200 per cent increase in prices during the past two decades

Housing is providing a solid return on investment in Alice Springs with new figures showing a 200 per cent increase in prices during the past two decades

HOUSING is providing a solid return on investment in Alice Springs with new figures showing a 200 per cent increase in prices during the past two decades.

East Side was the best performing suburb in the entire Territory with a 228 per cent increase from $153,750 to $505,000, followed by Gillen and Braitling which recorded increases of 199 per cent and 190 per cent respectively.

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Real Estate Institute of the Northern Territory chief executive Quentin Kilian said the figures represented decent capital growth for investors without “rocketing up”.

“If you’re seeing a dramatic price jump in a one or two year span then that’s a very difficult market to manage but over a 20 year span those sort of increases are not phenomenal,” he said.

“They’re very good increases but they’re not unheard of, particularly in regional areas with not a lot of new stock coming into the market.”

Mr Kilian said unlike cities on the east coast, there was limited land available for development in Alice Springs which helped keep price growth steady.

“It’s not like say in western Sydney where you can just turn off whole new suburbs, it’s quite difficult to find space to build in Alice Springs because it’s ringed with Indigenous land so you’ve got all sorts of land issues and what not,” he said.

“When you get demand increasing that’s what puts the upward pressure on pricing right across the board.”

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The figures also show first homebuyers were continuing to invest in housing in Alice Springs and Katherine despite pandemic driven rising unemployment and Mr Kilian said median prices in the towns of between $300,000 and $427,500 were not prohibitive to investment with interest rates below 3 per cent.

“At the $400,000 plus mark a first homebuyer shouldn’t shy away from that but that is probably as good a purchasing price as you’re going to get in Alice Springs and certainly you can defer you stamp duty and get a pretty decent mortgage at the moment,” he said.