Harcourts Jervis Bay sales manager Mark Flynn said metropolitan buyers who struggled to buy in cities caused added competition for local buyers, but he foresaw local property prices would remain stable.

“I don’t think we will see anything like what’s happening in Sydney, but we could see increases coming into the warmer months again.”

Ray White Nowra director Craig Hadfield said investors made up 40 per cent of buyers.

“That’s significantly higher than normal,” he said.

“With low interest rates and with money in the bank not giving the return it used to, more people are moving to property investments.

“There has also been an increase in local rental yields, so property owners are getting good returns based on their property’s purchase price.”

Mr Hadfield said Sydney and Canberra buyers who couldn’t afford metropolitan prices looked to the South Coast.

“Investors are looking for a good place to invest with good returns. At the moment we have a good rental yield and an opportunity for growth,” he said.

“We’re also still meeting a number of people looking to retire to the area, who sell their property in the city for a good price and buy an affordable home here in a good area and still have money in the bank.

“There’s also an undersupply happening at the moment. There are not enough homes to sell today as there were two years ago. The supply has dried up and that generally means prices will rise, but by how far is impossible to know.”

Mr Hadfield said commercial property investments had also increased over the past 12 months.

“For instance the building of the Quest apartments shows signs of moving forward and there’s been lots of talk around the Gerringong and Berry bypasses and how that would make it easier to travel down here, because of that I think there’s a huge amount of growth in the area in terms of investment.”

Craig Souter from Albion Park bought an investment property in Nowra in June. He said it was a “no brainer”.

“We looked all around our local area, Dapto, Unanderra, Albion Park, Warilla, Shellharbour and Kiama and there was just no chance we were going to get a quality property at a reasonable price,” he said.

“We were shocked at the amount of people who would turn up to inspect a 20-30 year old property we valued around the $370,00 mark, but we never could get the chance to make an offer because people would jump in with a high price of say $410,000 on an old property that needed a lot of work.

“We couldn’t see value for money. The property market was too strong. Nowra however is not too far from Wollongong and we just couldn’t believe the quality of the houses we saw for the prices.”

South Coast Register