Stockland is betting on Brisbane being the place to be for the next few years, as Sydney and Melbourne’s booming markets finally come off the boil and the Perth market continues to slow.
Chief executive Mark Steinert said that, after years of lagging behind its southern counterparts, the Brisbane market was primed for stronger growth.
“Brisbane has got high affordability and is showing the largest spread between house prices relative to Sydney that’s been recorded in history,” he said.
“Now that we’ve starting to see jobs growth emerging in Brisbane, that’s a market that we think will probably show the strongest growth in the next few years.”
Residential property prices have increased by around 4 per cent in the past year, a far cry form the 17.7 per cent rise in Sydney and 12.3 per cent rise in Melbourne, according to CoreLogic RP Data.
The company expects an 8 per cent decline in residential property settlements in Western Australia, driven by delays in approvals at Sienna Wood and projects nearing completion.
“We expect to achieve around 6,000 residential lot settlements (nationally), allowing for some production constraints in Victoria and NSW and continued slowing in the WA market,” the company said in a statement.
Property giant Stockland is betting on Brisbane being the place to be for the next few years, as Sydney and Melbourne’s booming markets finally come off the boil and the Perth market continues to slow.
Chief executive Mark Steinert said that, after years of lagging behind its southern counterparts, the Brisbane market was primed for stronger growth.
“Brisbane has got high affordability and is showing the largest spread between house prices relative to Sydney that’s been recorded in history,” he said.
“Now that we’ve starting to see jobs growth emerging in Brisbane, that’s a market that we think will probably show the strongest growth in the next few years.”
Residential property prices have increased by around 4 per cent in the past year, a far cry form the 17.7 per cent rise in Sydney and 12.3 per cent rise in Melbourne, according to CoreLogic RP Data.
The company expects an 8 per cent decline in residential property settlements in Western Australia, driven by delays in approvals at Sienna Wood and projects nearing completion.
“We expect to achieve around 6,000 residential lot settlements (nationally), allowing for some production constraints in Victoria and NSW and continued slowing in the WA market,” the company said in a statement.
The strength of the housing market helped lift Stockland’s underlying profit more than 9 per cent to $608 million during the 2014-15 financial year.
A boom in Brisbane would be great news for Stockland, which has thousands of new lots due to come onto the market in the next few years.
That includes the 20,000 home Caloundra South project on the Sunshine Coast, the company’s biggest ever residential development.
The company isn’t backing away from Sydney or Melbourne either – with a pipeline of major developments underway in both centres – though Mr Steinart doesn’t expect the runaway growth of recent years to continue.
“Some of the sub-markets where you’ve seen this very strong growth, we think that’s going to slow down somewhat but we certainly don’t foresee any collapse in the market,” Mr Steinart said.
He said a lack of new construction in the years following the GFC, coupled with population growth and a reasonable, if not upbeat, outlook for the economy meant demand for new housing developments would remain strong.
“We see an undersupply in all of the metropolitan markets in Australia, we’ve been under-building for some time and particularly post-GFC,” Mr Steinart said.
“So what you will continue to see is relatively high levels of construction and relatively high levels of sales activity as a result of that.”
For the year ahead, Stockland has forecast 6.0 per cent to 7.5 per cent growth in underlying earing per security and distributions of 24.5 cents per security.