Confidence in Queensland's property sector has remained steady despite the impact of floods, the latest ANZ/Property Council sentiment survey has found.
Property industry sentiment in Queensland dropped marginally from 142 index points in the December quarter, to 140 index points in the March quarter. A score of 100 points is considered neutral.
Queensland Executive Director of the Property Council, Jen Williams, was delighted by the results, which illustrated that overall confidence within the sector remained at some of the highest levels on record.
"Despite it being a challenging start to the year with the floods and the economy still dealing with new variants of COVID-19, the continued high level of confidence highlights that the fundamentals within Queensland's property sector are extremely strong," Ms Williams said.
"Once again Queensland proved its resiliency in the face of flooding and many of the lessons learnt during 2011 were adopted, helping the State bounce quickly from the impact of the floods.
"In the city, where the flooding was particularly severe, most office buildings were back up and running again within days of the flood ending.
"This latest survey was taken only 2 weeks after the floods and remarkable capital growth expectations for the office sector improved from where they were in December last year.
"Feedback from our Brisbane VIP campaign which concluded last week highlighted that people still love the unique benefits of coming into the city for work and leisure, and the latest results from the sentiment survey show that there is increasing confidence to invest in our city centre."
Despite the positive result, Ms Williams did acknowledge the survey had highlighted some key areas of risk for the property sector and economy.
"Once again, the survey has highlighted that housing supply and affordability as the chief concern for survey respondents," she said.
"When coupled with the fact that most people within the industry expect interest rates to increase in the near future, it is vital action is taken now to ensure that the situation does not spiral further.
"In addition to this, most survey respondents believed that their work schedules and staffing levels would increase over the next three months, which reinforces the importance of attracting skilled workers to Queensland so we can capitalise on the significant confidence and momentum that our state is experiencing," Ms Williams said.
