Buyer's Guide to Murwillumbah
Drew Wade is Murwillumbah born and bred and has been serving the area for 10 years.
Prices are on the rise
We are starting to price things up here, for an average decent sized house on a 5 acre block of land, you’re looking at 600k -700k.
The rents are going up as well, you’re looking at average rent being somewhere around $350 in the town, but when the buyer confidence comes back into the market then we start seeing people looking for that little bit extra in what they want to retiree to.
When the market was low during the GFC there was barely a single 5 acre block sold to people retiring, so that definitely swings with the market.
Commute times to the Gold Coast airport and Brisbane
It’s super easy coming back from flights, I can be sitting on my back deck in Murwillumbah in 20 minutes, and you can’t do that in a lot of the capital cities.
With the improved highway it takes between an hour and a quarter and an hour and a half to get to Brisbane, depending on how fast you go.
We sell houses down here to quite a few people where one partner works in Brisbane and drives backwards and forwards.
Where our buyers are coming from
South east QLD is a large chunk of our market, historically we tend to see less people coming north, however that's starting to happen more and more now because we are cheaper than Byron and even Mullumbimby so we’re seeing a lot of investors who have got investment properties in Mullumbimby are also buying here as they can start to see the prices improving.
Increased density in the CBD
There's a development of 20 odd units about to go in behind the police station in the CBD, and they’re looking at being 2, 3 and 4 bedrooms with walk up and elevator access.
This will massively increase the density in the CBD and we’re expecting to see a quite lot of older residents in that as an alternative to a retirement village.
I feel there’s still a long way to go, there's a section around the park, Locks Park, and all of those building there are approved for 3 stories, so we just sold our first property there.
The owner is considering subdividing the block, putting a 960 block with an older home in the front, and then subdividing and putting a couple of floors of units behind, really capitalising to the high density units.
Strong retiree rental demand
We have an ageing population in here and we have a real rental shortage at the moment.
Sometimes the older generations, particularly over 50 year old plus single males, and similar for older women, don't have a lot of family that are alive and around the area, and there's not a lot of income, so then they're missing out to people who can pay more or have higher incomes.
So we definitely have quite a furious demand, it’s getting to the point where we’ve had up to 90 people apply for rental properties.
Boutique lifestyle factors
Murwillumbah has what we refer to as boutique sort of stuff, 15 yrs ago you couldn’t get a focaccia here, and now, whilst we have a McDonalds, the cafe scene on the Saturday and Sunday is really awesome.
There’s a really great wood fire pizza and tapas bar that's opened up and it’s a thriving little foodie scene now, they’ve also got the little food festival which happens 3 or 4 times a year as well.
What we’re seeing is that people are really weighing up the lifestyle factors, on top of the fact that it’s a slow country town, there’s no traffic, but can you still get a really decent coffee - which seems to be a real big factor in people’s lives these days.