Port Hedland is booming: but property investors should proceed with caution and here’s why.
Port Hedland had a capital growth rate for the year to Mar 2008 of over 37% according to the latest Residex statistics. The median price for a house in town is now A$770,000 and the average rental yields 2.2%. That average price will get you an average 3 bedroom house on a reasonable sized block, hopefully not too near the port which does run 24/7: Port Hedland is the main port for the Pilbara iron ore mining region of Western Australia. The good news that anything will rent in Port Hedland: in fact arriving in town without a booking, even if you have tent, can be a fraught experience. Everyone needs accommodation Port Hedland and the people who work in Port Hedland do it for one, and one reason: the money. Pay rates are superb for everyone from tradesmen, to cooks, to cleaners. So the rent demand is there, the capital growth has been spectacular: why do I say stay away?
Australia is suddenly talking about modular or pre-built housing. It’s taken a while but suddenly modular housing is seen to be the way of the future, and you would have to say about time too.
Thinking of leasing prime down-town office space in Perth, Western Australia? You might get a better deal in Paris! I am serious. A record of A$900 per sqm has just been set for a lease on the Exchange Plaza building on The Esplanade. According to reports the undisclosed tenant does get prime water views in a top notch building: you’d want them for that price: that’s A$500,000 / year for 500 sqm! This rate is a stunning 40 per cent increase o the previous highest rent of A$650 per sqm this time last year
Lies, damme lies and statistics, and seachangers
If you are not from the Land Downunder you may not know what a seachanger is. Seachangers are baby boomers who sell up in the big cities and move to a smaller coastal town usually relatively close by (that’s up to 500km in Australia!). If they don’t move to the sea they are called treechangers when they move to rural towns often in the hills.
The traditional marketing tools of the trade for an Australian real estate agent is a hammer: to help secure the large billboard outside the property. If its an expensive property this used to mean that the sign was bigger, with more pictures: some of the pictures might even feature the property for sale rather than the friendly face of the agent involved. More than one property owner has wondered why so much of the advertising that they often pay for involved the agent, their family, their agency, their dog, in fact anything else but the actually thing that was being sold: their home!
