Every year about this time I get asked what I think the market will do for the next year. Sometimes it's easy to answer a question like that responsibly and sometimes it's very difficult. You can't always see what's around the corner. The Gold Coast market has been consistently growing stronger for the past three years. Both sales turnover and prices are up significantly over that time but turnover has levelled out. This has not produced a uniform result across the entire Gold Coast. Some of the major impacts are more apparent in the Southern Gold Coast with prices booming in some suburbs like Palm Beach. There are also differences between the house and unit markets. *BURLEIGH HEADS, BURLEIGH WATERS, CURRUMBIN WATERS, ELANORA, PALM BEACH, REEDY CREEK, TUGUN, VARSITY LAKES So, as always it is buyers that are driving the market along with the limited amount of stock that is coming on the market to meet their demand. Demand for rental properties in the Southern Gold Coast area is also extraordinary. We have a fairly large number of properties that we manage so statistically our monthly results are indicative of the market overall. The November figures were Enquiries from all sources1619Open for Inspections86People inspecting430Applications taken105Properties let20 On average the 20 properties each generated 81 enquiries, 4.3 inspections, 21 tenants inspecting and 5.25 applications taken. We are currently running with a 0.6% vacancy rate and a 0.52% arrears rate over 7 days. The rental market has been like this for quite a while and it shows no sign of dropping off. Will the Strength of the Gold Coast Housing Market continue? Sales seem to have dropped back to historic normal levels in the last 2 quarters of this year, exclusively because there has been a reduction in properties coming onto the market during that time. The reduced stock combined with a large pool of buyers is pushing prices up in many areas. As I mentioned earlier this pressure on prices is also being seen in the rental market where vacancy rates across the Gold Coast are running at less than 1% compared to a balanced rental market of 2 ½% to 3%. The Reserve Bank shows no signs of wanting to increase interest rates in the near future although for some time now the banks and Valuers have been somewhat conservative when it comes to setting values for lending purposes. The banks are also pushing rates up around the edges to build equity and give themselves room to offer slightly better deposit rates. Tourism related industries seem to be going well thanks in part to exchange rates; certainly people in this area are happy to put their hand in their pocket. Building has been busy for some time with a lot of development booked for 2017. So, once again the volume of listings, interest rates, tax policy and exchange rates will all feed into how the property market goes in 2017. From an agency point of view I cannot see any event in the next 12 months that would indicate that this very strong market will not continue throughout 2017. by David Hamilton Gold Coast Property Market Outlook for 2017 palmbeachfn.com.au December 2016 First National Palm Beach 15 Palm Beach Ave Palm Beach, Queensland 4221 Phone: 07 5559 9600