REVEALED: How our house market compares to CQ neighbours

MUCH like the three bowls of porridge Goldilocks tasted, the temperature varies widely between the real estate markets of Rockhampton, Mackay and Gladstone.

REIQ Rockhampton zone chair Noel Livingston has poured over the latest REIQ's Queensland Market Monitor report for the June Quarter and offered to compare the widely different fortunes of the three different cities.

Rockhampton

WITH its diversified economy, Mr Livingston said Rockhampton was not as vulnerable to buffeting as the other two cities by changes to the mining and industrial sectors.

It was a luke-warm performance from Rockhampton over the June quarter with a 1.9 per cent drop in house values.

As someone who had tipped a market improvement for some time, Mr Livingstone believed the difference now was the tightening of the rental market from 8.6 per cent in March 2017 to three per cent in June.

"The rental market is quite strong and that reflects the change in the jobs situation in Rockhampton," Mr Livingston said.

"The sales market will run off the back of that at some point as the supply of rentals gets tighter.

Although it was a flat time of the year for real estate activity, Mr Livingston said they were getting busier in their office and expected this to continue as the months progressed and buyers had greater certainty about what was going on next year.

"I'm feeling pretty positive coming into the later part of the year," he said.

Mr Livingston said another factor worth considering was the negative impact of the drought on Rockhampton's rural economy.

"If we're showing some sort of improvement in this situation, a bit of rain's going to go a long way," he said.

Mackay

IN a case of hot porridge, Mackay's house market is doing well with the REIQ highlighting it as one of the few markets reporting an increase in sales volumes for the past year.

The suburbs showing the largest annual increase in the volume of sales were Eimeo, East Mackay, Mount Pleasant, Blacks Beach and South Mackay.

Mr Livingstone said the 2.5 per cent increase in Mackay house's prices, combined with their tight 1.9 per cent vacancy rate for the rental market, were a reflection of the city riding high on the back of increased mining activity in the region.

"They've had a large influx of population by virtue of the mines re-employing in the Bowen Basin area," he said.

"It's a city that relies heavily on the mining industry and its fought back quite solidly from a perilous position a couple of years ago.

"I've spoken to our guys up there and they're extremely buoyant about the Mackay market."

He cautioned with Mackay's situation that their heavy reliance upon mining was a risky situation where the city had "all their eggs in one basket".

Gladstone

THE porridge is cold in Gladstone.

The REIQ report revealing a staggering 10.7 per cent drop in house prices for the June quarter, down 6.8 per cent for the year.

It's worse when looking comparing property prices from five years ago - a 38.8 per cent price drop.

"Gladstone is a boom and bust town because it survives on the influx of major industry and often once the infrastructure is finished, the workforce disappears," Mr Livingston said.

"The recovery is a much slower process, it's heading in the right direction. it relies on the influx of industry.

"It has such big highs and lows, like a roller coaster, if you get on or off at the right place, you can do very nicely but that can act in reverse."