North Shore Realty Blog
Real Estate Sunshine Coast

We had our local council elections last weekend and we have a new mayor (at least temporarily) for the Sunshine Coast plus new councilors for the two divisions that cover Coolum and the North Shore villages. All I can say is that I am glad that we have finally finished. You get the feeling that the public in general is just over politics and the people involved with it. The new mayor for the Coast won with a grand total of 33% of the vote. Not exactly an overwhelming endorsement. He may not necessarily be the mayor of the Sunshine Coast Regional council for too long either with the push to deamalgamate Noosa. If that happens we will probably all need to go and vote again. This could be any time in the next 18 months if it goes ahead. On top of that, the way things are panning out federally I wouldn’t be putting that ballot marking pencil away too soon either.
This years Easter holiday period turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. We had two weeks of Queensland school holidays either side of the main five day weekend plus southern holidays for the two weeks following. Whilst generally things were very quiet either side of the Easter weekend, a fantastic forecast for going to the beach saw the coast explode with people from the Thursday afternoon. Every shop and restaurant on the coast filled with people and there was hardly a spare grain of sand at the beaches for the whole time. The traffic gridlock on the road back to Brisbane on Easter Monday was testament to the weekends crowds but it certainly left everyone on the coast with a buzz. In the midst of a tough tourism market this was by far the best Easter the Coast has seen in many years.
Never a dull moment Clive has been keeping everyone on their toes at the place formerly known as the Hyatt. Will he or won’t he put a casino in is the burning question around the Coast. A major announcement was expected this week as he was scheduled to make a speech that was to include outlining his plans for the resort. He pulled out of making the speech over the weekend and today he has announced that he will stand against Wayne Swan in the next Federal election. There is so much going on in this blokes life that I don’t know if he knows what he is going to come out with next. Stay tuned.
One thing that did manage to get confirmed was that the PGA will be in Coolum again this year. Dates for the event will be December 13-16. This is a little later than the last few years and is getting close to Christmas so hopefully that will help to attract a few more headline golfers for an end of year family holiday.
Coolum will get a much needed business stimulus in the very short term. Local mining services company Nitro Drilling has taken the whole top floor of the new shops across from the Surf Club (where the Sol Bar used to operate). Office fit outs are now underway. Nitro employ over 250 people and locating their main office in central Coolum will be a welcome injection throughout the local business community.
A few months ago I mentioned that our sales teams had undertaken a course of in room auctions to try and stimulate some sales activity and offer our sellers an alternative to our standard terms of selling. Well on April 12 we completed our fourth event of this type. The results of that auction were 5 sold prior to auction, 2 sold under the hammer and 3 more sold by the following Monday. In this market it does not get much better than that. More importantly, we have now taken 54 properties to auction through In Rooms events since October with 39 of those properties now sold. That is an overall clearance rate of 72%. If anyone is interested in finding out more about these events please contact any of our sales team. Our next Auction is being planned for 14th June 2012
In general the market has been showing signs of improved activity since the beginning of the year. At the very least we are seeing signs of a consistent level of turnover but there is no doubt that we are still in a difficult and patchy market. There are suggestions of possibly a couple of interest rate reductions in the not too distant future plus a return of stamp duty concessions for Principal Place of Residence as of 1st of July 2012. Both of these should hopefully assist in maintaining the momentum we are seeing right now. A serious boost in confidence is really what is needed and hopefully the recent changes in two levels of government will help kick start the process.

Another very successful and exciting in room auction was held by the team at North Shore Realty at Ramada Surfair in rooms last week. There were 15 properties presented on the night to a crowd of over 80 people with the announcement of 5 SOLD prior to the auction, 3 negotiated and sold under the hammer and 7 others now passed in with further negotiations occurring with interested parties under finance conditions.

There was an interesting cross section of properties on offer in our recent auction with vacant land, units and houses put up for sale in numerous price ranges starting at the budget price of $250,000 to prestige properties over $1million so an array of properties to attract all types of buyers – investors & owner occupiers!

Our Auction clearance rate is an impressive 76% from all our auctions (including post auction sales) which is more than double the state average! Our sales for the past quarter are up and it’s easy to see from all the sold signs appearing around our area that sellers are now realistic with the challenging market conditions and sales are happening!

Astute buyers are now out buying as they feel the market could be close to the bottom of the cycle and don’t want to miss out on purchasing now to get perceived value for money before all the bargains are snapped up! Our next in room end of financial year Auction will be held on the 14th June 2012.

Vendors – click here for an auction video and more information about how we can help you get the result you are seeking in selling your property.

What a difference a day makes. Good title for a song but also a very apt description of the events unfolding around the resort formerly known as the HYATT COOLUM and from this point on known as the Coolum Resort and Spa. After a month of court proceedings and threats of the resort operator running out of money to pay staff and honoring future bookings The Hyatt saw the light and decided that, yes, it was probably a good time for them to move on and let Big Clive have his resort to do what he pleases. An announcement was released on Friday along the lines that the Hyatt was proud of their 24 years in Coolum but they would now amicably move on immediately was followed by Clive’s announcement thanking the Hyatt for establishing the resort and by the way, I never meant any of those things that I said about you but see you later. All good friends again. Now that is all over and done with, don’t expect that to be the last you hear from Clive. Saturday the word was out that the Hyatt (oops) the Coolum Resort and Spa was offering the general public the chance of three days of free golf in April. The dates are the 10th/16th/20th so I would suggest that you call straight away if you want to get in on that. Then waking up on Sunday, the front page of the Sunday Mail screamed that Clive was bringing a casino to Coolum. This is part of his master plan to bring more Asian tourists to the area and his billion dollar investment in Queensland tourism. It was reported that full plans of the proposed redevelopment of the resort including the casino will be released by mid year. After what seems like a thousand years of casino rumors on the Sunshine Coast I would not be betting against Big Clive getting this done. I have very little doubt that it won’t matter at all what local reactions will be and that this will be life changing for the Coolum and North Shore region, let alone the wider Sunshine Coast community. The simple fact that the Big Fella just bankrolled the biggest landslide in Australian political history just one week ago will make it nearly impossible for this to be shot down. I am not expressing any opinion on this being good or bad but it might not be a bad idea to start taking photos of what we used to look like.
Ok, the Kevin & Julia showdown has been run, the State election has finished and now we only have the local Council election to get through. These guys just don’t get how much of an intrusion in to all of our lives this
has been. Bring on APRIL 28 so we can all get some rest in peace. Unfortunately I don’t see this as being the end of the matter. Apart from everything else, we are about to go through our own de-amalgamation shuffle. God bless Noosa but to think that anyone with any degree of common sense or fiscal responsibility would think it was worth wasting the expenditure, efforts and progress made through the last four years to pander to a small group of Hastings Street businesses is mind boggling. If I had a roll of $50 notes I would go out on David Low Way and start burning them now to save wasting time.
Last months sinkhole in the David Low Way near the Coolum sports fields is nearly repaired. It has been slow going and the weather hasn’t exactly helped but it might be good practice for the council engineers. Another sink hole that didn’t cause as much of a traffic issue also opened up in the park in Andrew St at Point Arkwright and it is still a work in progress. We have had a really good test of our drainage systems across the North Shore villages during the month. A very slow moving torrential rain system moved from Coolum to Caloundra on the 22nd. In one hour we had 150 mm of rain fall. Streets and parks filled to the brim but not too much house inundation damage was reported particularly in areas that have been developed since 1992 flood levels were used as our development guide. It was a very good test of the mitigation plans that were put in place in the early 1990’s and the water receded very quickly once the rainfall passed. Anyone with an underground car park was not so lucky but thankfully we do not have too many of those in the area.
The deluge on the 22nd did cause the cancellation of the Coolum and North Shore Community Forum. This has now been moved to Wednesday April 18 and will still be held at the new North Shore Community Centre at Pacific Paradise.
Easter is now upon us and the forecast is looking pretty good. Lets hope that we get a clear run of weather and some late bookings to finish off a pretty good holiday season. See you next month.