The Healthcare Industry is one of the biggest job creators in Australia, alongside Professional Services and the Mining sector.
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The new Sunshine Coast University Hospital (SCUH) is scheduled to open in last 2016 and will initially provide 450 beds and a range of healthcare services and facilities to residents on the Sunshine Coast. It’s expected that construction will bring in about 2000 workers to the area and then upon opening the hospital will have about 3500 staff. The hospital will increase services, with expectations that 738 beds will be open by 2021, with around 6000 staff to support them. If you’re not familiar with hospital sizes – that’s pretty big!
An it’s not just the SCUH that will bring people to the coast, it’s the associated private hospital, research precinct, academic services of this major tertiary teaching hospital and commercial developments.
The site for the SCUH is a 20 hectare greenfields site located on the corner of Kawana Way and Lake Kawana Boulevard (see map below).
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Generally speaking, investing near a hospital is a good thing. Lots of people coming to the area, lots of people looking for accommodation, good rental prospects as well as potential for capital growth.
So what do investors have to choose from around the hospital precinct?
There is a lot of new construction of housing and apartments around the area. Birtinya Island is perfectly placed and is seeing a tremendous amount of activity. In this area brand new housing at the time of writing starts ‘off the plan’ around the $400-450k mark for a 3 bedroom home.
There are many ‘executive style’ apartments being constructed with fantastic resort style facilities, with 1 bedders around the low $300s, working upwards.
Then there’s the top end, waterfront style new homes up around the $800k+ mark. Very nice stuff! If buying brand new, already constructed or ‘off the plan’ is something you are interested in then there’s plenty to look at here.
I see some good opportunity in the region with the older style houses in surrounding suburbs. Suburbs like Warana, Wurtulla and Bokarina are literally one kilometer away. This is where entry 3 bedroom units can be picked up from $300k with great potential for renovations improvements to increase yield. You can safely pickup 3-4 bedrooms homes from $350-450k on good size blocks with loads of renovation appeal.
Generally the median prices in these suburbs is around the $400k mark give or take a bit either side and rental yields are around 5%.
As always, projections of capital growth are always just projections or speculation, but I do believe that picking up a bargain older style home in one of these suburbs, just a kilometer away and renovating to increase yield could be a great idea. With the healthcare infrastructure projects going on over the next few years it could be a good time to get in whilst prices are still relatively affordable.
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