The invisible council line dividing Parkinson and Browns Plains should not in theory have much of a bearing on property prices for comparative buying either side of it, but over the years it has.
It used to be that values for properties in Parkinson were more than a comparable housing option over the council boundary in Browns Plains and in the suburbs beyond it.
That was for no other reason than that the property fell within the Logan council area. It did not mean the quality of the home was any less or the location was any better.
That meant sellers in Logan got less return on their investments, but now that is starting to change as property demand increases.
In 18 years of doing real estate in Logan, Nigel Giles from Browns Plains Real Estate has seen signs of this.
“The price difference between Logan City Council and Brisbane City Council, or the price differences between, say, between Parkinson and Heritage Park, there has been a huge gap between the suburbs, but that’s now closing up a bit,” he said.
“We’ve seen the Brisbane market kick on a couple of times over the past 10 years, we haven’t really seen that in Logan, but we are now.
“It’s just that there’s no stop on the market.”
He said it is now common for homes in Parkinson to be valued in the 800s, while it used to be that homes were in the 600s.
In Heritage Park, he has also seen the norm shift from houses being valued in the 500s to the 700s in recent times.
He said COVID is one factor on demand but the biggest factors are the grants for first home buyer’s and builders.
“The government screwed us in that they took any incentive to buy an established home and went and put it on new homes,” he said.
Until March 2021, people could get both, totalling $30,000 in incentives or $15,000 for each grant.
With that, Mr Giles said more people looked to development areas such as Yarrabilba and Flagstone to optimise the grant.
“That killed us, we had two years of crap – there were plenty of things on the market and prices weren’t moving, but we had no buyers,” he said.
Now the home builder’s grant is finished, he said there has been a swing back to buying established homes, which means areas like Browns Plains and Heritage Park have limited stock.
“Buyers started thinking, ‘well, I’m not going to Yarrabilba for $15,000 a year from when I can buy established here,’” he said.
“$15,000 just doesn’t go anywhere.”
