Home builders move to cash in on stimulated would-be buyers

This weekend will be the test of buyers’ appetite for new homes as developers eagerly wait to see whether stimulus-created interest can be converted to sales.

First-home buyers Nat and Tayla Leach in Caloundra. Photo: Glenn Hunt

This weekend will be the test of buyers’ appetite for new homes as developers eagerly wait to see whether stimulus-created interest can be converted to sales.

Display villages and home-building websites were flooded with hopeful buyers last weekend, following the announcement of the federal government’s HomeBuilder stimulus package, which is aimed at sparking an increase in construction activity.

At-scale developers Stockland and Mirvac have both deployed additional staff at display centres on the weekend to meet demand, after the latter reported a five-fold increase in foot traffic last week. Home builders Simonds Homes and Metricon reported new leads had tripled in the past seven days.

All are hoping some of these inquiries become sales and kick off the mandated three-month contract-to-construction timeline outlined in the stimulus plan.

Stockland’s head of residential communities, Andrew Whitson, said he was confident the short time frame to act would encourage people to buy. “It’s time-bound to qualify for the grant; you’ve got to enter into a contract by December 31 and commence construction by the end of March. To do that, you’ve got to buy land that is either titled or near title, and there is a finite supply of that out there,” Mr Whitson said.

“We’ve seen a lot of immediate demand on our completed product at the affordable price points.”

Nat and Tayla Leach, both 25, are in the process of buying a block of land and choosing a builder to craft their first home within Stockland’s Aura community on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. The healthcare workers have been saving up for the past few years and said the HomeBuilder package gave them more flexibility and opportunity to create the home they wanted.

“Having that grant as an option for first-home buyers alongside the (Queensland govern­ment’s) first-home buyers’ grant — that’s an extra $40,000 that we wouldn’t otherwise have been able to access,” Ms Leach said.

Many home builders say the package is a lifeline. Economic uncertainty and social-distancing restrictions caused the number of new-home sales through the crisis to grind largely to a halt.