ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Two young professionals looking to buy a house together in the next few years are now starring down the barrel of using that deposit to buy their first home outright – something unimaginable just a couple months ago.
The median house price in Betoota at the time of writing is just a tick over $450 000. To ‘get in the market’, Denise and Tom Davis need roughly $90 000 in liquid cash as a deposit.
However, with things going the way they are, that median house price figure is set to plummet.
A number of large infrastructure projects in the Betoota region have been cancelled or put off indefinitely, such as the Link Road Solar Farm and the new rare earth mineral mine out on the Windorah Road.
That has already had a devastating impact on the local market but this predicted slump in housing value is set to make the dreams of owning a home much more attainable for Betoota’s younger residents.
“We almost have the deposit together, it’s been almost 7 years,” said Tom.
“The places we were looking at were about 350 to 450. But I think we might hold off until the pain really begins. Every Boomer investor and their dog are trying to sell their houses nowhere in town,”
“You knock 30 percent off that and we’d only have to save a few more years – or have a little baby mortgage,”
“There’s a real oversupply and to tell you the truth, nobody is buying right now because everybody knows they’re going to be able to get it cheaper in 3 months time when the government stops paying everyone’s bills. Denise and I are lucky enough to have jobs right now, they’re not good jobs but they’ll keep the lights on in this shit heap of a town.”
Denise laughed.
“Yeah, there’s always going to be work for teachers and legal aid lawyers,” she said.
“I think people should take stock of what they have and be thankful for it. There’s a lot of people worse off than us. Billions of people around the world,”
“Things are going to get much, much worse moving forward. The pain is going to be immense – for speculative investors. I really have no idea what the world is going to look like in 3 months time.”
More to come.
