We have been looking further into the Brisbane Unit market and can honestly say that this is a high risk investment area. If we as Brisbane Buyers Agents are to assist you in investing your money and the unit market is going to be highly over supplied in the coming years and whilst it might get you closer to the Brisbane CBD, it will have a high chance of being vacant for long periods of time and has a high risk of loosing value.
If you do a bit of research yourselves you will find there are many articles warning the Brisbane unit market is over supplied and is only going to get worse. Not one of our properties has gone backwards but we have no units or townhouses with any clients, We cant see the logic when you can purchase a house for the same money which has land and at the end of the day it’s the land that appreciates.
The other area of concern is high vacancy rates. We have seen land lords giving away a months free rent just to get a tenant and right now we are seeing a very high vacancy rate in the unit market with many more to come online this year.
As for costs, it’s becoming clear that with the addition of Body Corp fees, rates and the high risk of long vacancy periods, the cost of unit ownership will be higher than the end of cost of home ownership. You also run a high risk of your lender not giving you money for the purchase due to valuation shortfalls which is occurring over here right now.
The major cost difference is in the rates, you will pay lower rates but at the sane time you are paying body corp fees which make the costs around the same for each type of property. So the costs of ownership are similar, but level of risk is not and as I said in my last email, you can buy a very good brick and tile house about 14 k’s from Brisbane for the same money.
The simple rules of investing in property is to buy land as close as you can to the capital city and then as buy big as you can within your budget and then to buy a brick and tile home. This combination will result in a very low risk successful property investment.
