Sophie Foster
Updated 3 Feb 2023, 8:24am
First published 3 Feb 2023, 1:00am
The Gold Coast is seeing almost half of its inspections coming from interstate, the Sight Unseen report found. Picture: Nigel Hallett.
Queensland is still the hottest target for interstate investors – and rising, the latest Sight Unseen report found, with almost a million Aussies taking to property hunting remotely in the past year.
The report, which tracks property inspections on digital platform Little Hinges, said almost a million people inspected property outside their home state in the past year – making up one in three of all digital inspections.
Little Hinges CMO Mike York said “remote working, cost of living increases and a general sense of fatigue with the big cities following an uncertain two years has seen buyers, particularly from the southern states, look for sea and tree changes”.
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January to December 2022: Green figures are inspections conducted from interstate, pink is percentage of inspections that are international.
“This result has been particularly obvious in Queensland, with an average of 33 per cent of all inspections coming from outside the state. On the Gold Coast, we are consistently seeing almost half of the inspections in the region coming from outside the state.”
The report found that the Gold Coast was now also seeing the highest number of international inspections of any city, an average of 7.8 per cent.
The Sunshine Coast-Noosa stretch has the second highest level of interstate inspections.
Inspection breakdown for the Sunshine Coast across January to December 2022 by Little Hinges.
“The Sunshine Coast has the second highest interstate inspection percentages in the country,” it said, with Brisbane seeing “consistent percentages of interstate inspections over the last 12 months, with a peak of 24.75 per cent in January ‘22”.
https://safeinator.reamedia.com.au/f75f2d804620ba9c8bd06155bc448e04b06147ff/html/r.html
The second half of the year saw a rise across all markets in interstate inspections compared to the first half of the year, the report found, with only Brisbane seeing “a marginal decrease”.
Sydney and Melbourne both saw growth over the second half of 2022, with six month averages of 12 per cent (Sydney) and 15 per cent (Melbourne).
For the Gold Coast 42.6 per cent of inspections were interstate, and 7.8 per cent international.
The Sunshine Coast had 34.6 per cent of inspections from interstate and 5.6 per cent international.
Brisbane saw a “marginal decrease” in inspections. Picture: Brendan Radke
Brisbane’s interstate breakdown was 21 per cent with 5.5 per cent international inspections.
Mr York said Little Hinges continued to see a strong uptick in agents and property managers wanting to combine virtual and physical inspections to open up their properties to the widest potential prospect base.
Little Hinges analysed over three million virtual inspections for their January to December 2022 Sight Unseen report.
WHO’S LOOKING?
Interstate average: 27.1 per cent
International average: 6.1 per cent
Gold Coast: 42.6 per cent interstate | 7.8 per cent international
Sunshine Coast 34.6 per cent interstate | 5.6 per cent international
Brisbane 21 per cent interstate | 5.5 per cent international
Perth 17.9 per cent interstate | 7.6 per cent international
Melbourne 15.3 per cent interstate | 6.4 per cent international
Sydney 11.4 per cent interstate | 6.4 per cent international
(Source: Sight Unseen report/Little Hinges)