Surfing The Market
The Age
Wednesday January 20, 1999
MELBURNIANS' summer Surf Coast exodus brings to Victoria's western shores its annual peak property-market activity. Estate agents and rental investors are inundated with demand for their services and for holiday accommodation, as thousands of visitors throng to seaside havens stretching from Queenscliff to Lorne.
The factor making the Victorian Surf Coast hot property this season is growing confidence in the performance of real estate investments; Melbourne values have matured at a high level 18 months after the 1997 boom. Interest-rate drops are also incentives for Melburnians to buy beachside as they find it increasingly within their means to borrow on the family home in order to finance a holiday house.
The Queenscliff director of Jens-Gaunt real estate, Neil Laws, says that driving the coastal market are Melburnians who visited friends holidaying in the area and fell for it.
"They import buying confidence from Melbourne," Mr Laws says. "There is also a growing band of people who, with the advent of computers and the Internet, buy themselves a retreat here, knowing they only need to go to Melbourne perhaps twice or three times a week for work." The family home is replaced by a low-maintenance inner-city apartment and a seaside getaway.
According to Mr Laws, Queenscliff is regaining its reputation as a top Victorian vacation spot, a process bolstered by the preservation of heritage buildings.
Mr Laws says an economic decline in the town 20 years ago protected it from the savage seaside developments of the 1970s.
"Queenscliff is pretty unique both architecturally and structurally. We have got a lot of grand buildings and that is one of the things that has made Queenscliff special," he says.
With the return to popularity, Queenscliff property values have made a comeback. Mr Laws says a market highlight was the sale of a 1920s weatherboard house on a large block in April 1997 for $130,000. The house was re-sold in May 1998 for $173,000 with less than $10,000 spent on refurbishments and a $170-a-week tenancy.
Riding on the confidence wave is the Brook family who, in September 1998, took possession of their newly purchased holiday house in Lorne. Recently renovated and nestled into the hilly hinterland that makes up the town's residential area, the $345,000 three-bedroom house comes after 26 years of holiday rentals in Lorne.
Why Lorne?
For the Brooks, it is familiarity with its busy resort atmosphere and the blend of beach and forest landscapes. Its position as one of Victoria's bronzed-body meccas also makes it an attractive option for the family's two teenage children.
"We have been coming to Lorne for 26 years. My parents have a house at Cinema Lookout and we just love the Great Ocean Road, the openness of the beaches and the bushwalks," Isabel Brooks says.
"We wanted Lorne because we have two teenagers and they really need to be where the action is. We don't want to be driving them around, so it had to be Lorne."
Their search began a year ago, after they grew tired of paying between $800 and $900 a week for short-term rental accommodation.
The manager at Smyth real estate's Lorne office, Grant Powell, says the Brooks' buying decision is one of many made as the weather grows warm.
New to the market, Mr Powell says, are offerings of holiday apartments. Drawing a major share of buyer attention in Lorne over recent months has been the Cora Lynn development of 26 apartments, where $120,000 was paid for one-bedroom apartments of five squares while two to three-bedroom apartments attract between $200,000 and $230,000.
Mr Powell says the redevelopment of Lorne's Pacific Hotel to 39 apartments was the next teaser for buyers willing to fork out from $150,000 to $400,000. Apartment sales were 70 per cent pre-booked after being launched late last year.
The Mayor of Surf Coast Shire, Cr Julie Hansen, says with such a strong focus on the coastal town, the council's challenge is to regulate the development taking place. "Our difficulty is not getting development; it is getting appropriate development," she says. "The challenge for council is to send to people a very clear message that there are certain values that need to be protected and that our planning scheme reflects those values."
She says council surveys have found the community wanting to blend the retreat lifestyle with the natural environment for a sustainable future. The shire, which covers 40 kilometres of coastline, earned 100 million tourist dollars in 1996, and that figure has been increasing by 10 per cent each year.
The council is to introduce a planning scheme and design guide before the end of the year, to assist development controls in the shire.
Cr Hansen says Surf Coast is also the only Victorian council to appoint a community-based committee to consider contentious planning applications. So far, 15 per cent of planning applications received by the council are determined by the committee.
The main planning issues confronting the committee are the sharing of significant views, the destruction of native vegetation and the over-development of building sites.
"We are being promoted by Tourism Victoria and our communities have benefited enormously from that. However, there are many who say that, with tourism being our major economic business, we must also keep in mind the need to make that tourism sustainable," Cr Hansen says. "One of the threats to us is that we foul our own nest."
The main limit on overdevelopment, according to Grant Powell, is the scarcity of private land.
"One of the beauties of the coast is that, from Angelsea to Apollo Bay, you are locked in by crown land," Powell says. "You just can't keep bringing subdivisions in, so development is checked because of that."
Greg McKnight, director of L.J. Hooker at Aireys Inlet, says one of the last subdivisions taking place on the coast was at Fairhaven.
Mr McKnight believes development limitations have maintained an "open feeling" to town designs within Surf Coast, which attracts city buyers.
The proposed release of 86 lots comprising the Forest Park Drive estate at Fairhaven will
offer buyers new purchases.
"It is going to provide ocean views and good beach access and it will probably be the last release of vacant land in the area," Mr McKnight says.
Blocks have fetched between between $70,000 and $90,000 during pre-sales with an anticipation that values will increase to between $230,000 and $300,000 once houses have been built.
© 1999 The Age
