Property Point

Anyone who wants reassurance about Mackay real estate need only look at the state of play in our local business community.

There are several crucial things you need to be across if you want to run a successful business in Mackay, or anywhere else for that matter.

Identifying a service or product that is in demand is an important start. Got the skills to provide that service or product? Yep. Well that’s a big tick.

A site to base your operations? Done! Another tick.

Now it’s just a matter of having the right staff. Um, well … we do have problems there.

Getting staff is a major issue for Mackay businesses and many are forced to look outside the usual solutions, such as putting an ad on Seek, to solve the problem.

I bumped into a successful Mackay businessman the other day who is bringing a group of skilled workers from Latin America to Mackay to provide the manpower (now there’s a word you probably can’t use any more but “people power” has a completely different meaning and “person power” sounds ridiculous) that he needs for his expanding business.

There are plenty of other businesses in the mining, mechanical, restaurant and service industries that are looking overseas to find skilled staff.

And this is where real estate comes into it. If our market were overflowing with empty investment properties, our migrant workers would be waltzing into whatever affordable, quality accommodation they wanted.

But it’s not as simple as that. It’s great to bring staff in to meet demand but they have to live somewhere and that’s where local businesses are getting creative.

Quite a few businesses are now buying property to accommodate their workers. Several have bought motels or other properties to accommodate staff coming from overseas and down south.

There is certainly a need for a separate conversation about the “housing crisis” that is an issue here and elsewhere in Australia and it is something governments need to address.

However, the point of this column is that the issues facing businesses do provide reassurance for people buying and owning real estate in this town.

Firstly, most businesses seem to be flat out and struggling to meet demand. So the economy is going well, which means business owners are making a buck and local people have jobs. That’s good for the real estate market.

Secondly, what does it tell us about the real estate market if rental accommodation is so tight that business people are buying property to accommodate staff? It comes back to economics … supply and demand.  

There is a pretty good reason to be confident about buying into a market when supply is tight and demand is strong, particularly when there appears to be no sign on the horizon of that changing any time soon. But that’s just my opinion.

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