Source: The Urban Developer, 8 February 2018.
The Queensland economy is now well into recovery stage after an inevitable slump following the mining boom.
In the third quarter of 2017, state final demand rose a significant 2.7% year-on-year, which was the first time in three years this measure returned a positive result – the culmination of five consecutive quarters of positive growth.
Access Economics have also forecast the Queensland state final demand will average 3.8% annual growth over the next four years, easily outstripping the average annual growth of 0.2% in state final demand over the last five years.
Infrastructure boom set to takeover apartment construction
According to JLL, Queensland employment surged 4.1% year-on-year to August 2017, easily surpassing Victoria and New South Wales (3.7% and 2.3% respectively) and the national figure of 2.8%.
This is in spite of a clear slowdown in the construction of apartments in Brisbane that has been well underway for the better part of 18 months.
Building approvals for units in the greater Brisbane area were down 59.9% for the year to August 2017 as it became harder for both developers and investors to obtain finance.
Interestingly, the pressure from APRA for banks to limit investor finance has actually benefited the Brisbane apartment market. It has inadvertently forced developers to create more appealing and better quality products – which is contributing to a change in buyer profile to more owner-occupiers and less investors and reducing the amount of “cookie cutter” apartments in the market.