Life In Australia

After a lot of thought, we’ve decided against using my stock market gains to buy an investment property in Brisbane.

The latest real estate numbers show that house prices in Brisbane have only increased by 4.4 percent in the last 12 months. The previous 12 months showed similar price growth. Fair enough, house prices are still increasing but the rate of increase is anaemic. With market watchers predicting more interest rate hikes I don’t think there’s a great deal of steam left in the housing market.

The best time to have got into the market here was around 2001. The average house price then stood at about $150,000. By 2004 it had more then doubled to about $320,000. Fortunately, we have owned our house throughout this period. It seems unlikely that by buying another house now we’d be able to enjoy similar gains.

Today average house price in Brisbane is around $340,000 (£136,000). Of course an “average house” here is detached and quite a bit bigger than an average house in the UK so houses here are still good value for anyone coming here from the UK .

We’re thinking about using our profits from the stock market to get into the property renting market in Brisbane.

We can buy something quite nice, close to the city centre with the money we’ve made.

Here are a couple that we’ve looked at. The first has three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a separate toilet and is priced at $339,000 (£135,000) .

The second has two bedrooms and two bathrooms and is priced at $315,000 (£126,000).

There’s nowhere in the UK you can get houses like these, within a couple of miles of the city centre at prices like this.

We’re looking into the tourist market vs the longer term rental market.

The tourist market is more lucrative but there’s more hassle - people coming and going every few days. The longer term rental market looks easier.

I see the Housing Industry Association is saying that houses here are at their most affordable for three years.

Interest rates have been steady, people’s incomes are rising and house prices are falling. House prices have fallen by 5 percent in the last three months.

The average price paid by a first-time buyer for a house still seems quite high to me at $342,900. Typical first-time buyer repayments are $1,992 per month.

Houses here are still expensive compared with the late 1990’s. Then the average buyer needed to devote 17 percent of their take home pay to mortgage payments.

Now the average buyer needs to devote 29 percent of their income to mortgage payments.