Australia’s Rural Property Market Starting To Perk Up

Australia’s rural property market is starting to show some signs of revival and investors interested in deals with rural land are recommended to take advantage of the uptrend in the market, Colliers International said.

Tim Jelbart, rural and agribusiness valuation manager at the specialist marketing agency, talked recently on the sidelines of an investor and advisor conference held in Brisbane. According to the expert, the uptick in transaction volume in certain parts of the country is strong evidence of the market’s road to recovery.

The rural property market is currently seeing strong interest from investors, which has led to a small increase in mean land values. Many people have been shunning the rural property market since the first signs of distress in global financial markets started to emerge, but now they think that it’s high time for the rural property sector to take a turn for the better.

Although commodity prices are still a factor that worry future investors and keeps dictating their purchasing decisions, transactional activity will definitely pick up this year, Jelbart commented.

The expert took the Richmond cattle production area in Queensland’s northwest as an example to illustrate the recovery of the property market after a couple of years of lackluster growth. Between 2009 and 2011, there were just four deals involving the sale of properties of 5,000 hectares or more. Last year alone, the number of transactions surged to 10, with the bulk of deals taking place in the second half of the year.