We have been in business 19 years and July this year was our best yet! July has been recorded as our best-ever month of sales, as well as new landlords engaging our quality Property Management services in a climate where value for money is front of mind.
The Coast overall is incredibly well positioned going forward. Based on our own internal data across the last several years, well over 50% of buyers across the Coast don't rely on any sort of finance, so many buyers are not affected by the recent interest rate increases. Some of the younger demographic who purchased at their maximum capacity and had 2-year fixed rates under 2% will do it tough potentially, but outside of that all outlooks remain positive for the Coast.
Land and development sites are becoming incredibly rare, and you just can't replicate prime locations like Cotton Tree, Picnic Point and other beachfront and waterfront locations. The price of these sites are only increasing, construction costs continue to rise, and the net internal migration figures are not slowing down. Despite these factors, the numbers of consumers relocating to call the Coast home is steadily growing, with the pendulum of demand vs supply not swinging as it should if we were to be seeing a downturn.
Time will certainly tell us the full effects of these current market conditions, but after having gone through two full market cycles in our in the industry over the last 24 years, we believe that whilst there may be a few unique opportunities pop up in outer lying areas and younger pop-up suburbs, key locations will not only hold their value, but grow slightly going forward.
There will be an initial period where some people will hold their breath, believing what they are reading from the media and going with the consensus of how things should react, but once this uncertainty subsides and people realise that things are still going forward, there will be a solid foundation to see steady and more moderate gains going forward in the market across the Sunshine Coast.
6 months ago, when we all knew we would see rate rises, everyone believed that if we saw three consecutive rate rises the bottom would fall out of the market, yet here we are almost four months in and we are still seeing incredible demand for well positioned properties. Time on market has stretched out a fraction, from under 20 days to about 35 days, but overall, we are still seeing a very solid and healthy market.
There were a lot of people who believed that COVID had to affect the market and there were tens of reasons as to why it should have, but it didn't go that way, we saw a slight pause in the market and then things continued to move forward. Our market will certainly be a great one to watch and we are confident that we will look back on this period and see the Coast get through it strongly.