A suburb, 45 minutes south of Brisbane, is rising as the top destination for cashed-up property buyers from south of the border after nearly half of all sales there last year went to southerners.
A city in southeast Queensland is rising as the top buyer destination in the Sunshine State for southerners and is poised to knock the Gold Coast off its
pedestal.
Logan, 45 minutes’ south of Brisbane, had four suburbs named in the southeast’s top 20 for residential property sales to interstate buyers last year.
A recent report by property experts RPM Group found Logan was growing as a hotspot for property buyers from New South Wales and Victoria, taking
the shine off the Gold Coast as the top buyer destination in terms of total percentage of properties sold.
Logan Reserve, Crestmead, Marsden and Yarrabilba were all given honourable mentions in RPM’s SEQ Property Research Report for the December quarter.
Logan Reserve emerged as the state’s major attraction for southern buyers with the RPM data showing in percentage terms, that New South Wales and
Victoria buyers snapped up a massive 42.7 per cent of all properties sold in the suburb in 2022.
There were 186 southern buyers in Logan Reserve in 2022, the fifth highest in the southeast.
In nearby Crestmead, also in Logan, 33.9 per cent of sales in that suburb went to interstate buyers last year.
Likewise, southerners accounted for 31.7 per cent of properties sold in Yarrabilba and 26.4 per cent of sales in Marsden were from New South Wales or Victoria.
The Logan sales compared with Surfers Paradise, where only 23.4 per cent of sales from that suburb went to southern buyers.
The report pointed out, however, that Surfers Paradise still recorded the most number of sales, as opposed to percentage of sales, to southerners and was still the No. 1 destination suburb for southern buyers.
The RPM report also revealed that Logan held three of the top five positions for housing approvals in 2022.
Logan Reserve and Chambers Flat were the engine room for housing construction growth in southeast Queensland in 2022 with the combined suburbs recording 790 housing approvals in 2022, edging out Landsborough in Brisbane’s north which recorded 682 approvals.
Boronia Heights-Park Ridge took out fourth place with 630 housing approvals and nearby Greenbank-North Maclean ranked fifth with 540 approvals.
Among the many developers experiencing the interstate buyer rush is Gold Coast-based Orchard Property Group, which is building Willow at Logan Reserve and Pebble Creek at South Maclean both in Logan.
Orchard chief executive Ted Cronin said interstate migration added fuel to the southeast property market with many buyers from the southern states
seeking lifestyle and affordability.
He said he expected Logan to continue its popularity with southern buyers because of its affordability and its strategic location in the Brisbane-Gold
Coast growth corridor.
“Apart from the obvious lifestyle appeal of the region, it makes economic sense for these buyers to move to Logan,” he said.
“Rather than having to spend $800,000 alone on a block of land in Melbourne or Sydney, these buyers recognise that they can buy a house-and-land package in Logan for much less.
“House and land packages at Logan Reserve start from about $578,000 and pricing at this level for a home so close to the Brisbane CBD is unheard of in Sydney or Melbourne.
“It gives Logan a key advantage in the property market that we believe can be sustained for decades to come.”
Mr Cronin said his company was confident in housing growth in the southeast as the state geared up for the Olympics and despite a massive
drop in the number of lot registrations from 31,545 in 2017 to 17,583 last year.
He said forecasts from Logan City Council, SGS Economists and VLC consultants showed 54,145 dwellings would be required for the area by 2066.
Federal forecasts showed Queensland’s population was expected to grow by more than 16 per cent by the time Brisbane hosts the Olympic Games in 2032.