What’s Going on With Australia’s Mining Towns?
By Louis Christopher on 29 Jan 2014
No Comments yet, your thoughts are very welcome
Data on mining towns is mixed
Photo: Graeme Churchard
SQM Research has published some property data on the nation’s resources-based towns by way of listings and vacancy rates.
Source: SQM Research
Source: SQM Research
Source: SQM Research
Source: SQM Research
As can be seen, there is a wide variety of results. That suggests to me a universal truth – housing markets are very dependent upon the underlying economic base of the locality.
Other macro influences such as interest rates and aggregate GDP are secondary influences. So for agricultural based towns, the respective housing markets appear to be stable and almost boring! Consider Cloncurry, Esperence and Grafton.
“There are plenty and plenty of towns that appear to be in trouble…”
Some mining related towns are also holding up okay based on SQM’s property data. Consider Ballarat, Beaconsfield and Katherine as examples.
However, there are plenty and plenty of towns that appear to be in trouble. For instance 71 per cent of the mining/gas related towns surveyed had a vacancy rate over 3 per cent
Additionally, 66 per cent of all the towns surveyed recorded a rise in vacancy rates year-on-year, while just 24 per cent of agricultural/livestock related towns had a vacancy rate of greater than 3 per cent.
I’ll let you speculate what this all means. And please, if you are interested, click here to find the implied gross rental yield for your postcode and here to find the current asking price for both houses and units in your postcode.
