The gap between house and apartment prices in Brisbane is now the widest in at least two decades, but is set to shrink over the next 12 months as housing affordability bites and buyers choose cheaper options, Colliers says.
Colliers residential director Queensland, Andrew Roubicek, said the price difference between houses and apartments in Brisbane has reached 45 per cent compared with an average of around 20 per cent between 2003 and 2015.
Brisbane house prices further escalated with the onset on COVID-19 when people placed a higher value on privacy with interstate migration to the Sunshine State also propelling Queensland’s property market.
Property data company CoreLogic estimates that Brisbane house prices increased 32 per cent in the year ended March 31 compared with 15 per cent growth for units over the same period.
CoreLogic said house price growth is slowing faster than units and Mr Roubicek predicted that Brisbane apartment values will rise by “at least” another 15 per cent in the next 12 months.
Mr Roubicek said rising construction costs have hit the new apartment market hard and that comparable established stock costs about 25 per cent less.
“There have been several examples of new developments achieving pre-sale [targets] only to have developers refund deposits and tear up contracts because building costs escalated to a point where it was financially unviable,” he said.
“As a consequence, developers who are looking to acquire new development sites are forced to increase their projected sales prices by around 20 per cent.
“Just 18 months ago a two-bedroom apartment in Brisbane might have sold off the plan for $9000 per square metre.
“But to build that apartment today the developer would need to achieve a sale price of $11,000 per square metre for the project to stack up.”
He said as result new stock is selling slower than established units, a trend that will play out through the rest of this year.
“The market is coming to terms with those newer prices and are seeing in the short-term better value for money in the established unit market.”
He said it is a similar scenario to when GST was introduced in 2000.
“When GST came into the market overnight the cost of housing went up 10 per cent and put more demand into the established market, where the prices of stock grew and the difference between new and second hand became narrower.”
Mr Roubicek said he believed the record price gap between houses and apartments will contract through the year.
“If you believe in history, if you believe in charts, and take a long-term view you would have to think that gap is going to narrow because everyone’s talking about affordability, everyone’s talking about interest rate movements,” he said.
“Natural forces will push what would have been a buyer of a detached home back into the unit market because of affordability.”
Article Source: www.afr.com
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