RURAL real estate agents aren’t shying away from the fact the drought has impacted the market, but are quick to point out it’s not all doom and gloom
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Davidson and Cameron RuralCo general manager Luke Scicluna said the whole region was in uncharted territory.
“It’s the first time on the Liverpool Plains that we didn’t get a winter crop,” Mr Scicluna said.
“They never miss a crop, but this year they have.”
While Mr Scicluna was “certainly seeing the pressures” of the drought with some clients, there was still movement on the market.
“If you’ve got a blue-ribbon rural property, it’ll sell,” he said.
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“It’s the second-tier properties, that next step down, that we were selling very easily before when things were rolling along. They are sitting on the market a bit longer.”
“We’re talking about the properties that might need capital improvements.
“People are looking at those properties and going ‘look we can buy it, but then we need to repair some things, and we won’t have money coming in during these conditions’.”
Branch manager Jacqui Powell said there were still people out there willingly to spend big on a property despite the drought.
“We sold one recently, and they know they’re not going to have an income off that property for two years,” she said.
“There are people holding off from selling, because it’s so dry they can’t present their property the way they would wish to – and you can’t blame them.”
RuralCo CEO Travis Dillon said the demand for “good quality properties” was still strong.
“That’s really on the back of underlying strong commodity prices,” Mr Dillon said.
“Whether we are talking livestock, wool or grain, the price is still really strong, and that’s underpinning the rural property sector.”
Despite the drought, Mr Dillon said the northern NSW and southern Queensland market had performed strongly during the past six months.
“We are definitely seeing still a number of transactions,” he said.