Cairns Property News - December 2024

Here's wishing you a very happy festive season for Christmas and the New Years celebrations!
Now back to the shortage of housing situation, we're seeing some major Government focus on resolving this, in the meantime property prices are generally starting to stabilise.

■  Cairns Locally - Local Housing Action Plan
A review of existing plans and strategies, key demographic data and the identification of key focus areas of need have been collated in a comprehensive document that will guide Council’s response to the housing needs of Cairns. The Local Housing Action Plan (LHAP), which was endorsed by Council today, identifies key areas that need to be addressed, and the subsequent actions required, to tackle the ongoing housing crisis. More info.

■  Queensland wide - Prices Stabilising
Queensland’s residential property prices stabilised over the September 2024 quarter, as a wave of Spring sales began settling. The latest median sales results released by the REIQ, reveals a modest 0.26% increase in Queensland’s median house prices for this quarter. 
While annual house price growth remains impressive across the state, some regions saw slight quarter-on-quarter dips, suggesting a slowdown rather than a halt in price growth. Gold Coast, Brisbane, and Cairns were among the house markets showing signs of stabilisation, while regional areas like Mackay (8.83%), Noosa (7.37%), Townsville (6%) and Gladstone (4.93%) experienced the most significant quarterly gains.

■  Around the country - Housing crisis solution
Three million additional strata units offer part of the solution to housing crisis. New analysis has identified the potential to build more than three million additional strata units over almost 1.3 million sites across Australia’s capital cities, providing one potential solution to Australia’s growing housing crisis.
Of those units identified, almost 500,000 (16%) are situated on ‘low complexity’ sites without any material slope, heritage rules or the risk of a hazard such as bushfire or flooding. The analysis excludes high-rise and mixed-use opportunities, with the average number of potential units per site at just 2.5.

■  Did you know? - Some contract days are actually not days at all.
Under REIQ contract definitions, certain days don’t count as business days for property transactions:
1. Saturdays and Sundays
2. Public holidays in the place of settlement
3. The period from December 27th to December 31st each year.
This means that from December 25th to January 1st, no contract conditions or settlements can take place and they will fall on the next business day - which will be 2nd January 2025.

Helping you with your real estate journey.

DANIEL SHEEHAN - 0409 265 326