Katie Keam has transformed the derelict "Nunnery on Ackers" — covered in graffiti and left to decay for decades — into her dream home.
"This whole main room was just completely mouldy and disgusting … we didn't even have a front door, it was boarded up with wood," Mrs Keam said.
The 32-year-old purchased the 1920s home with her husband Zac Keam just five kilometres from the Townsville CBD two years ago for less than $200,000.
After a renovation that the couple estimated was less than $100,000 — with help from Mrs Keam's cabinet maker dad — the property more than doubled in value to $480,000 in 2022.
"The bones of it were so perfect and so beautiful," Mrs Keam said.
"Our electrician knew the place, [he said] it was called the 'love shack' in the 90s, it was apparently a bit of a party house."
Renovation revival
Real Estate Institute of Australia president Hayden Groves said more home owners were undertaking renovations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2021, Australians poured a record of more than $12.3 billion into home renovations, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Between January and August this year, home owners have already spent $8 billion on renovations nationally.
Mr Groves said "properties that need work" were appealing to buyers because they were unable to find anything else suitable.
"During the peak of the pandemic, the cost and access to materials and specialist trades and labour became very difficult," Mr Groves said.
"The demand for buying established homes and renovating versus buying land and building is surging back."
Property listings 'extremely low'
But even fixer-uppers are becoming harder to find.
Property data firm CoreLogic found that in regional Queensland, property listings were 43 per cent lower than usual at this time of year.
"We're not seeing listings kind of keep up with the demand for housing," CoreLogic head of research, Eliza Owen, said.
Townsville real estate agent Giovanni Spinella said buyers could not afford to be picky.
"Because of the low stock levels, people are compromising — do they need that extra bathroom? Do they need that extra bedroom," he said.
"The market is more relaxed around having to have that shiny new feeling, buyers are being a lot more flexible."
He said some buyers were being pushed outside the city centre as listing numbers continued to drop.
"Prices have increased in certain suburbs; it is pricing some buyers out of the market and pushing those buyers into other suburbs that they may not have been considering 12 months ago," he said.
He said the combination of low listings and higher prices meant some houses weren't even making it onto the market.
"If we get them to auction, they're selling under the hammer… some are selling prior, just based on exceptional offers, and the owners are taking them," Mr Spinella said.
New builds vs renovating costs
The Real Estate Institute of Australia said a boost in older homes being renovated could help mitigate Queensland's housing crisis and rejuvenate regional areas.
"We're about 110,000 homes short of the underlying demand by the middle of next year," Mr Groves said.
"As many homes that we can save, and we can have occupied, the better."
In Queensland, the first home owners grant gives eligible first home buyers $15,000 towards buying or building a new home.
Mr Groves said he would support greater incentives for first time homebuyers to take on fixer-upper homes instead.
"There certainly should be some much, much greater equality in government grant systems for first home buyers – often, they're designed to only apply to new construction," he said.
"In some jurisdictions around Australia, they don't have to pay stamp duty on it either."
He said the difference could be tens of thousands of dollars.
"A house and land package price of say $500,000 the difference in stimulus in certain states can be $35,000 to $40,000," Mr Groves said.
"You could isolate out those regional areas to help stimulate more young people and first-time buyers coming into those regional towns in Queensland and throughout the rest of Australia."
For first-time buyers Mr and Mrs Keam, the past two years restoring their home — previously owned by a local nunnery — has been worth the hard work.
Mrs Keam said they were lucky to have entered the real estate market when they did.
"Prices now are insane," Mrs Keam said.
"I think we really got in the market at such a good time. I don't know how we could afford it now."
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Home buyers turn to fixer-uppers as property listings plummet - ABC News"
Post a Comment