In Part 5 of our Brisbane Buyers Agent Case Study with Luke we are looking at property deals in Rothwell and North Lakes.
If you haven’t read the first previous instalments of the case study you can check them out here:
Brisbane Buyers Agent Case Study — Luke Part 1 — Introducing Luke
Brisbane Buyers Agent Case Study — Luke Part 2 — The Buying Criteria
Brisbane Buyers Agent Case Study — Luke Part 3 — Location Funneling
Brisbane Buyers Agent Case Study — Luke Part 4 — Target Location Analysis
Luke had decided to focus on North Lakes and Rothwell as his target locations. These areas offered properties that met his buying criteria, which was a budget of $350,000, properties within or around 5 years old and cashflow neutral to positive at 70% LVR (he was buying in his self managed Superannuation fund). These areas are growing. There are projects here that will increase the services and facilities in regards to retail, commercial and community facilities, particularly in North Lakes, but the big ticket item coming to this region is the rail extension from Petrie to Kippa-Ring. New rail stations are planned at Mango Hill (just opposite North Lakes on the other side of Anzac Avenue and Rothwell and work on the rail extension has begun and is expected to be completed in 2016.
North Lakes and Rothwell are geographically quite close to each other. When it comes to the overall ‘feel’ of the locations and the deals available, however, they’re quite different.
North Lakes has real family suburb type feel. It has great facilities and services, particularly when it comes to shops and schools. There are areas of North Lakes which are quite established and there is a huge amount of new housing still being built in the newer areas of this subdivision. You can get a newish 3 bedroom property here starting around the $300k mark and a newish 4 bedroom property starting around the $350k mark. There can be quite a variance however, in the amount you could pay for a property depending on the position of the property within North Lakes, the size of the land that it’s on (they can squeeze a 4 bedder into a postage stamp if they want to!) and the condition of the property and it’s particular features.
Rothwell is the next suburb out from North Lakes/Mango Hill heading toward Redcliffe. It doesn’t necessarily have all of the facilities of North Lakes, but it’s close enough to North Lakes to utilise all of these services. Housing here is more affordable and as a result the demographic here is slightly different…which is kind of code for….it’s a bit more rough around the edges in Rothwell!
Nevertheless, the rental yields can be slightly higher and you can still obtain a good value purchase here. There are also a number of duplexes in this location.
After inspecting the areas very closely and inspecting a number of properties in Rothwell, Mango Hill and North Lakes, Luke decided to focus solely on North Lakes and we went on to inspect another round of properties before deciding to make an offer on a lovely 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom property at the end of a cul-de-sac in a more established part of North Lakes. The property was an ex display home and so had many of the nice finishing touches that you would see in a display home.
In the next instalment of our case study we talk about making an offer on the property. Stay tuned!
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