Oh FFS

One of my favourite weekend pass times is a visit to the website of the Gold Coast Bulletin. It's cheap (in every sense of the word), you don't have to cram into a Jetstar plane and unlike a visit to the Gold Coast, you don't have to wash the sleaze off as you depart. Post website requires only a brief wipe with refresher towel.  

And it's the virtual Matterhorn of newspaper led real estate spruiking. It's why I was so pleased to see The Bulletin was covering Ray White Surfers Paradise's "The Event" auction weekend. To me "The Event" is an extravagant term, especially for something that's so far been as memorable as a wet fart.

The GC Bulletin pushed on regardless...

THERE has been a strong start to the residential section of Ray White Surfers Paradise's The Event auction weekend. Almost 150 people gathered in Tedder Avenue, Main Beach, this morning for the chance to pick up one of seven apartments for sale. Three sold under the hammer and agents are negotiating with potential buyers to get three more over the line.

As one dude in the comments section was only too happy to point out, it was a clearance rate of 43%. Seven properties were up for auction, it begs the question why did the Bulletin need to send a reporter AND photographer - to put together an online gallery - for this non event? I guess the local farmers' market wasn't on that morning.

A commercial auction yielded a clearance of 40% a boat auction tanked and the prestige auction managed a clearance of 36%. Now, there is an auction with over 100 properties today and I may have completely misread the market, but going on current trends it won't be a 80% clearance hit.

The most exciting part of the whole extravaganza though was the address by Ray White Surfers Paradise, dude in charge, Andrew Bell. Bell was given carte blanche in a report over 850 words and what he said boiled down to "buy now or miss out."

Mr Bell said now was the time to move before stock levels continued to dwindle.

"My advice would be that if you want to buy new apartments on the Gold Coast then you would want to make your move very soon," he said.

Amongst his crystal ball work, Bell also acknowledged the state of the Gold Coast market over the past few years...

Describing 2010 as a "baton change year", Mr Bell said the Gold Coast property market in general could only improve in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, which had wreaked havoc on the Coast in the past three years.

Which is important, because given the Gold Coast real estate carnage, we can then ask, why should anyone be listening to this guy?

2010

Ray White Surfers Paradise CEO Andrew Bell yesterday told a packed auction crowd the Gold Coast's current construction approvals were failing to keep pace with the booming population, which would in turn drive up property prices.

"The indications are that Gold Coast real estate is rebounding strongly from the effects of the Global Financial Crisis and that 2010 will be seen as a watershed year in the history of the region's property market, marking the beginning of the next upswing," said Mr Bell. 

 2009

 Mr Bell said there were positive signs in all five key drivers of the market -- the economy, interest rates, population growth, employment and housing affordability.

"The fundamentals are there and the property market 'planets' are in alignment," he said.

Mr Bell warned rising market confidence and population were expected to clash with a housing shortfall towards the middle of the year to force prices up.

Every year it's buy now before prices go up, but more recently...

THE median price of homes and units on the Gold Coast dropped more in the September quarter than those in any of the nation's capital cities, new figures show. On the Coast, the median house price dropped 4.8 per cent to $470,000 while the median unit price dived 9.1 per cent to $350,000.

LANDLORDS across the Gold Coast are being forced to drop rents and offer quirky incentives to secure tenants for their investment properties.

And about that unit shortage, as Queensland housing finance commitments have hovered under 10000 throughout most of 2010 - a figure not so consistently low since 2000 - for the first two quarters of 2010  Gold Coast apartment sales were 230 and 232. So just doing a - I'll admit, dubious calculation - checking Domain there's currently 2961 apartments for sale, meaning on current figures there's 3.2 years of stock to clear. In the sub $600k market there's 2033 apartments for sale, so 2.2 years of stock to clear.

I'm fully convinced I have to move fast to get a Gold Coast apartment, now if only the Gold Coast Bulletin would lift its standards - I'm thinking Page 3 Girls - and I might just make the move north.

Update
At the end of 'The Event', The Bulletin reports 'Things Looking up for Coast Property' but in the article they can't hide the facts...

The Ray White Event -- the largest weekend of property sales on the Coast -- sold 52 properties out of the 128 listed for sale between Friday and yesterday.

 A clearance rate of 40.6%. Oh dear...