Trading places: Brisbane’s east side takes off

On cinema screens back in 1997, Darryl Kerrigan was offered the king’s ransom of $70,000 for his modest home, practically in Melbourne Airport’s backyard. If someone told you that 10 years on, property just a few streets from an airport would be worth 10 times that, your response would probably sound like something Mr Kerrigan would say: “Tell ’im he’s dreaming!”

But it’s true. According to the Real Estate of Queensland (REIQ) three-bedroom homes in some of Brisbane Airport’s neighbouring suburbs, like Clayfield, had a median of around $718,000 in the September quarter. Property on Brisbane’s industrial east side, both commercial and residential, is booming like never before.

In the summer edition of Queensland Property & Lifestyle, the dramatic transformations taking place in the residential and commercial property markets in and around the Australia TradeCoast precinct is examined.

“As South East Queensland’s population and economy grows – with an influx of 40,000 to 60,000 people per year - so too does its transport and trade hub, Australia TradeCoast, which incorporates both the airport and the Port of Brisbane,” Queensland Property & Lifestyle editor Lauren Cameron says. “Air, sea, road and rail routes all meet around the mouth of the Brisbane River, and there are a host of exciting new developments in the pipeline that agents say will start making investing in the area very attractive indeed. If prices are already fetching nearly three quarters of a million dollars, the sky’s the limit.”

More than 17 million passengers pass through Brisbane airport in a year, and that figure is expected to triple by 2035. To cope with this, Brisbane Airport Corporation has announced the construction of a new parallel runway, taking off in 2009. And from Dubai to Belgrade, all over the world developers are beginning to cotton on to the concept of an Airport City – fusing residential, commercial and logistics concerns together. Brisbane is no exception.

“The Gateway Motorway is being modified to include a new route to Brisbane Airport, which is expected to take up to 50,000 vehicles per day off Airport Drive, and the continuous release of commercial real estate on the airport’s 2,700 hectare site, spread between seven differently-zoned precincts, is proving irresistible to businesses,” Ms Cameron says. “Prime commercial real estate in the Australia TradeCoast region can fetch between $110 and $185 per square metre – a 21 per cent increase over the last two years. “And a recent forecast for industrial markets in the Brisbane region identified Australia TradeCoast land values increasing by more than 33 per cent in the last financial year to average $455 per square metre. Rental growth above 16 per cent is expected during the 2007/08 financial year.”

A number of developments in the pipe-line for the area – including 2,000sq m of speciality shops and a 140-room international hotel - will, over time, attract a large workforce to the TradeCoast area, with the resultant, inevitable demands on the residential property market.

Ms Cameron says another arm of TradeCoast, the Port of Brisbane Corporation, is already moving forward with an initiative to house people who want to live close to their place of work. An attitude becoming more prevalent among younger workers is that time-poor people no longer want to spend frustrating peak hours stuck in traffic snarls.

“The solution is to move close to work, and Port of Brisbane Corporation is regenerating 80 hectares of industrial yards – two kilometres of prime riverfront real estate – as a housing development called Northshore Hamilton,” she says.

“The yards are currently used, conveniently enough, to store construction materials, but by 2027 they will be home to 10,000 Brisbanites. Midway between the CBD and TradeCoast, it’s a safe bet that it will be highly sought-after as a dormitory for both areas.”

To learn more about the Australia TradeCoast pick up a copy of the summer edition of Queensland Property & Lifestyle. Other features include the sea change phenomenon, the rise and rise of Hervey Bay, and renovation tips when preparing your property for sale.

Queensland Property & Lifestyle is the only place to access the latest REIQ Queensland median house, unit and townhouse, and land data, suburb by suburb, and is available in newsagents or online at:

http://www.propertylifestyle.com.au.

Nicola McDougall REIQ Media Manager, 3249 7302 or 0405 801 979