Post a Comment On: Brisbane Apartment

Comment from a reader on a prior post and newspaper story from this week:
Referring to the extract from the AFR: Qld Property Due for Kick Start:
One contributor to that article states in para 4: Quote:  “Because of the huge influx from the resources companies in the office towers, I think what is going to happen within six months is people will have to pay three months’ to six months’ rent in advance to secure an apartment,” Woodley says. “There really aren’t many being built.” Unquote.
According to and as reported in Australian Property Investor Magazine, January 2012 issue, (page 109) there were 5,957 units on the market for sale in Brisbane as of October 2011, not Queensland, BRISBANE!   
Repeat Quote: “There really aren’t many being built.” Unquote.  I find that statement very puzzling.  In excess of one thousand apartments are in current construction in some form around the Brisbane CBD 2km circle.
Resource workers all already have a home or somewhere to live and if have families, have an existing home, rented or under mortgage or owned outright.  They all know the story of their friends who invested their hard earned cash into Gold Coast Units and lost and the resource unions are already warning  their members about a repeat of this scenario of the 90’s fore-seeing harder times to come in that industry as China winds back just as the Japanese did in the early 90’s despite the upbeat talk about the mining “boom”.  And the contributor has also over-looked this: Resource workers are all on “contract labour” employed by labour hire companies, not the mining companies themselves. They have no full time job and are employed essentially by the hour only. They can be and are, dismissed with no notice or reason.  The banks will not lend to people in this employment situation.   They are not bankable in this economy.