OVER 94 per cent of Brisbane homeowners sold their homes for profit last year, amassing the highest profits the city has seen since the global financial crisis.
Updated figures obtained exclusively by The Courier-Mail show property resale profits topped $3.9 billion in Brisbane last year.
It’s believed to be the highest profit made in the Queensland capital since the property heyday of 2007 and comes after a stellar 2014 year that saw $3.86 billion in profits here.
The most profitable period last year was three months to September, when Brisbane property owners amassed $1.119 billion more than they had paid for their homes.
The previous quarterly peak for Brisbane was the three months to November 2007 ($1.289 billion) – which was just as the subprime crisis was hitting the United States and around a year before Australia felt the full effects of the global financial crisis.
Owner occupiers were more likely than investors to turn a profit, according to the CoreLogic RP Data Pain & Gain Report released yesterday, with units were more than twice as likely to be resold at a loss than houses were.
“Investor housing stock generally has more narrow overall appeal than owner occupier housing stock,” the report said
The proportion of properties sold at a loss across the southeast is falling though, with the Coasts going from one in five in 2014 to the Gold Coast logging an average of about 17.5 per cent last year and the Sunshine Coast at about 14.5 per cent.
Only 5.5 per cent of properties resold in Brisbane was at a loss last year, down from 6.4 per cent in 2014.
The local council areas with the highest proportion of loss-making resales over the December quarter were Ipswich (17.8 per cent), Scenic Rim (15.5 per cent) and the Gold Coast (14.8 per cent).
But from a regional perspective the largest proportion of loss-making resales were in Mackay (51.1 per cent), Fitzroy (41.5 per cent), Townsville (Qld) (34.8 per cent) and Wide Bay (28.2 per cent).
Matthew Gross of National Property Research said the expectation was that the owner occupier market would get stronger this year, with demand for houses more so than apartments.
He said Brisbane was being set up for some substantial growth given its median house price was so low compared to southern capitals – which would put it in good stead when interest rates begin to rise.
Brisbane investors Lynda and Ian Schloss have put their four bedroom property at103 Portal Street Oxley up for auction next Saturday (April 2). It’s the fourth home their family has done up from scratch.
“We watch the market and when it’s good we invest and when it isn’t we don’t. Brisbane’s still very good at the moment. We’re in our 50s so this is part of our retirement plan. The proceeds will be put into superannuation savings.”
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