Tag Archives: bendigo investment property

AT some point this year buyers will start piling into real estate.
First-home buyers, trade-up buyers and investors will collectively decide it’s time to buy and start a fun run towards the market.
The catalyst that will spook the hibernating real estate herd will be a TV news item or newspaper coverage of research that records an upturn in values in the previous quarter.
The migration back to the market will quickly gather a momentum of its own. Media, which devoted this year to gloom stories about property, will switch their focus to “the new property boom”.
People who spent this year living in fear of the Europe crisis, the affordability crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and the what-if-home-values-collapse-like-they-did-in-the-US crisis will rapidly develop a panic urge to buy real estate. The fun run will turn into a stampede.
The what-if-the-worst-happens psyche that galvanised consumers into inaction this year will be replaced by an I-don’t-want-to-miss-the-boom mentality next year.
Sadly, most will have already missed the best opportunities to set themselves up for capital growth.
They say you make your gains in real estate when you buy, not when you sell. That means buying when markets with future potential are at the bottom of their cycles.
In most cases around Australia, that means buying this year, not next.
By the time the research companies get figures that describe the upturn, write their reports and pass the good news to the media, the upsurge will have been gathering steam for six months or more.
In other words, most pack animals will miss the chance to be bottom feeders.
If I had unlimited funds and lots of time on my hands, I’d sign pre-Christmas contracts in the following 25 key locations: Gladstone, Toowoomba, Emerald, Mackay, Brisbane, Tamworth, Gunnedah, Muswellbrook, Newcastle, Sydney, Broken Hill, Bendigo, Ballarat, Warrnambool, Portland, Adelaide, Whyalla, Port Augusta, Ardrossan, Ceduna, Albany, Bunbury, Perth, Geraldton and Kununurra.
There are plenty of other good spots, but I’ve kept the list to 25. They’re all places with affordable options and great growth prospects.
Some places stand out among the possibilities – Adelaide, for example. Sooner or later Australians will realise that we have three boom resources states, not two. South Australia is the third.
The state has multiple billion-dollar mining ventures in various stages of planning or construction, led by the $30 billion Olympic Dam expansion.
Many of the businesses winning contracts from big resources projects will be headquartered in Adelaide, taking on extra staff. Olympic Dam proponent BHP Billiton will also have a bigger corporate presence in Adelaide.
Many of the workers engaged to develop Olympic Dam, the copper mine at Ardrossan and other big ventures will live in Adelaide as fly-in-fly-out or drive-in-drive-out or float-in-float-out workers.
Whyalla and Port Augusta will also receive multi-pronged benefits from the Olympic Dam project and other resources ventures.
Brisbane and Perth, as I wrote last week, are poised to stop the slide in their markets, with growing impetus from the emerging boom in construction related to the resources sector.
There are some compelling growth economies in the regions, and it’s not all mining-related. Key regional cities in Victoria, such as Bendigo, Ballarat and Warrnambool, are beginning to thrive from business expansion, population growth and the ongoing development of infrastructure.

• The Australian December 17, 2011 12:00AM
• Terry Ryder is the founder of hotspotting.com.au