Media hype and doom and gloom- massive FAIL
Mackay is witnessing a slight correction at the moment, in line with the state of the economy, the rest of Australia, and the temporary culling and restructuring of bad assets and deadwood.Don't believe the media hype as gospel.Unless you know the place, have been here for a long time, and have been involved in many previous real estate cycles. Doom and gloom sells many papers. Mackay is solid, if you buy in the right areas, and it has been so for over 3 decades. Out of various properties, we have dropped the rent for one, from $750 to $600, and an other from $420 managed to $380 self managed. Not a huge loss realy! Average rents for quality property is still anywhere between $420 to $500. As the previous poster pointed out, the oversupply of investment properties, to accommodate the mining boom personnel, has impacted on the overall release of vacancy figures.Companies were buying up houses in specific areas, to accommodate 5 and more workers, at a time, and with the culling process, the workers returned home, and the companies have been left stranded with with vacant properties in high worth areas . The specific suburbs have been visually devalued ( only visually, because the land values have remained stable and even saw increases) and the properties are difficult to fill, and will remain so until the economy lifts, or a new cycle of property owners invade the buyers market, and give the area back its appeal. Interestingly enough, values in adjacent suburbs, separated by a road, have not felt any impact, making it clear that knowledge of the area is of the utmost importance. People are still selling, and still complaining that they only made $80k rather then the $100 they had counted on, so PLEASE , do your homework, don't buy into the hype, and open your ears to other stories besides the " I have lost money, I can't sell " dilemmas. As investors we all make mistakes sometimes. Mine are at the Gold Coast, not Mackay! I would advise anyone to buy in now, for long term holds, while you still can. Check out the previous posts by " bianca" spanning over many years on the forum, to get an idea on the stability of the city.