Buying a property during COVID-19 lockdowns

“We’d purchased a fair amount of properties for clients in Ballarat, and so I was excited from the point of Ballarat was a great market and we had double-digit growth year-on-year for many of those purchases, but when you miss out personally, you’re like, ‘Damn it. I wish I’d started the business many years ago so I could purchase something for myself in Ballarat’,” Mr Paliwal explained.

Mr Paliwal explained he was helping one of his clients buy the property before a COVID-19 change in circumstances let the investor purchase for himself, having previously missed on a different hotspot.

“I kind of see Bendigo showing the same sort of signals as Ballarat did back in 2018, except instead of a very, very hot market, it’s more like a sizzle, just that increase in certain indicators that were showing.”

“Then what was the next right thing to do was present it to the next client, and that next client had a similar borrowing capacity thing come up. Banks just weren’t too sure on how they’re going to give out that money, and again, that came up for that customer.”

With both clients missing out, Mr Paliwal took it “as a sign” that having missed on Ballarat, he should purchase the property.

“I had no pre-approval, nothing. I had a relationship with the agent that obviously we’d worked with to secure that property for the customer, and I said, ‘If you can just give me a bit of time, I can work on what I can do with pre-approval’. See how it goes. I can’t guarantee anything. Like, two clients have missed out here. I don’t want to miss out on this property,” Mr Paliwal explained. 

The property researcher highlighted the growth potential of the area due to a diversified economy, population growth and the bang for their buck that investors get in purchasing in an area like Bendigo.

“Yeah, so Bendigo is very diverse when it comes to its employment with regards to defense, retail, hospitality. You’ve got manufacturing in some parts as well, as well as agriculture, like health with the new hospital. So it’s such a diverse regional city,” Mr Paliwal said.

“In terms of the natural supply and demand indicators for me, like the suburb of Kennington, which I purchased in, it’s seen over just the last 12 months a 25 per cent drop in days on market for house sales. We’ve seen rents as well over the last 12 months move up by over 6 per cent.”

“So, you’re just seeing a market where, including this odd period of COVID shutdowns uncertainty, places have been selling faster, there hasn’t been a whole lot of discounting, places have been renting for more, the stock has been reducing quite quickly, and median value as well jumping over 7 per cent over the last 12 months. It’s been a pretty good story, especially when you start thinking house prices commonly found between 350 and 450 in that suburb,” Mr Paliwal concluded.

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