Brisbane apartment prices in “free fall”

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Apartments bought off the plan at the start of Brisbane’s unprecedented unit-construction wave are selling at losses of up to 36 per cent, underscoring concerns from the Reserve Bank about the city’s concentrated inner-city market.

Property searches of high-rise apartment towers in Hamilton, Bowen Hills and Fortitude Valley built about five years ago show most sales this year had been at a loss.

The heaviest falls were a $152,000 plunge from an original price of $522,000 for a Hamilton two-bedroom unit with river views; a $150,000 decline on a smaller two-bedroom unit in the same complex; and a $145,000 loss on a $400,000, 60sq m unit in Bowen Hills.

…Andrew Coronis, managing director of Coronis real estate agencies across southeast Queensland, said price drops of 20 per cent to 25 per cent were not uncommon for resales after off-the-plan buys.

“It is just time to sit and ride it out if you can,” he said. “If rents drop a bit the yields still aren’t too bad. If you do have to sell, it’s better to do it now. I don’t believe it will get better in the short term.”

…Real Estate Institute of Queensland spokeswoman Felicity Moore said the property group was “cautiously optimistic” that the Brisbane market fundamentals would remain strong as supply peaked over the next 18 months.

…More than 5300 units have been finished in the inner city this year, and there are another 11,000 being built. The median unit price in Brisbane fell 2.3 per cent in the June quarter but house prices are still rising.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.