Hope your heads aren’t too sore from the Australia Day long weekend? I know I wasn’t the only one disappointed by the abysmal weather. On the topic of cooling, has the heat dropped on the Newcastle Real Estate market? In my opinion I believe things have cooled somewhat. It is fairly common for this time of year for the number of properties for sale to dwindle and properties taking longer to sell. This year so far we’ve had a solid influx of new stock and while toward the end of last year things were slowing down, the pace seems to be the same.
While I don’t believe we are headed for a market crash, I think the market has stabilised somewhat. The fiasco with the railway line truncation hasn’t stopped the interest from outside the area despite property hot-spotter Terry Ryder having taken Newcastle off his radar. In my opinion and experience, this is the right time to be buying in an area, when there isn’t the intense focus that there has been. Often by the time an article is published, the cat is out of the bag and the area is already flooded by investors. Case in point is Mayfield where the vacancy rate spiked and the days on the market (rental) were almost doubled what they were in previous years.
Mayfield has traditionally been a popular suburb for first home buyers but due to increased prices from competition from investors, first home buyers have looked elsewhere to secure a home. As a result areas like Wallsend have increased in popularity as the median house price is lower providing better value for money. The other benefit of Wallsend, besides its proximity to the Newcastle Link Road is most of the properties in the area have block size of average of approximately 600 sqm (source Pricefinder sales report 28/07/2014 to 28/01/2015).
Feel free to get in touch if you would like more information of which areas to buy in the Newcastle Local government area by email me at help@newcastlebuyersagent.com.au
