Townsville property agents experience rise in house sales, despite state wide report revealing fall.

“THE window is closing quickly” for potential home buyers to snatch a bargain, warns a Townsville real estate agent.

The recent Real Estate Institute of Queensland’s Market Monitor report painted a grim picture for Townsville’s property market, revealing the median house price had fallen by 4.7 per cent to $305,000 in the last quarter.

However, Real Estate Institute of Queensland Townsville chairman Wayne Nicholson said the negative figures simply did not match what real estate agents were experiencing “on the ground”.

“I get angry when I hear these figures coming out of Brisbane because they’re not on the ground where it’s such a different picture,” Mr Nicholson said.

“If agents don’t report their sales, CoreLogic won’t know about it for another three months or so and this is the argument I have with the people out of Brisbane because a lot of agents here don’t report.

“Sales in July and August in my office were the best we’ve had in three years.”

Mr Nicholson is managing director at Townsville real estate agent First National.

Harcourts director Ben Kingsberry echoed the sentiment and said that there “couldn’t be a better time to buy” in the city because prices were lifting.

“I don’t think the true market is reflected in what we’re seeing on the ground, which is the bottom end of the market increasing,” he said.

“And that’s where we really need to see it anyway so it can flow through to the higher end.

“I think the following reports are going to be really telling and I suspect even a lift in the median house price.”

Mr Kingsberry said the February floods were a major contributor to the weaker market price reported.

“We saw sellers who had chosen to sell flood-damaged homes ‘as is’ because they were uninsured or couldn’t afford repairs and wanted to cut their losses,” he said.

“If they were repaired homes they would be $350k homes but because they were damaged they sold for around $120,000 and similarly with units as well.

“That’s probably responsible for dragging that average (market price) down artificially.”

Mr Nicholson said projects secured for the Townsville region would help strengthen the property market in future.

“Around the skyline of Townsville, all of a sudden we’re seeing cranes,” he said.

“There’s just so much dollar value coming around and since the floods you’ve got more than a billion dollars being pumped into the economy in insurance money.

“The Adani mine has … approved, as well as the solar farm and other big projects … meaning more jobs.”