REIQ chief executive Antonia Mercorella.Credit:Glenn Hunt - Fairfax Media
She said the key challenge for the government would be ensuring housing and infrastructure kept up with the population.
“For the last two years we’ve had an incredibly tight rental market,and we’ve been watching prices grow and that’s only going to continue to get worse as we see more and more people from interstate moving here,” she said.
“The demand has continued to accelerate and there’s no real signs that it is slowing down.”
Ms Mercorella said the rental market could tighten further and people were offering more for properties in a bid to secure a home.
“There’s even an argument that they’ll get higher,so,because we’ve had the floods up here,there will be tenants and owner occupiers equally who are displaced and that will probably add further strain to the market.”
Ms Mercorella said there would be a wave of new international migration as well.
“More of those expats will probably come home,as well as new arrivals from other parts of the world,and it’s likely Queensland will be the beneficiary of that,” she said.
“We’ve seen quite a big shift to regional communities.”
Ellice Serrano and her family recently moved from Sydney’s Northern Beaches to Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland after her husband developed chronic fatigue and ended up in hospital for three weeks.
“I ended up picking him up from the hospital the day before I went into labour with our third child,” Ms Serrano said.
“We actually bought a house in Maleny about six months ago,and it cost nearly a million,which for a six-bedroom house is just awesome compared to Sydney.
Ellice Serrano and husband Marcos moved with their three children,Chloe,Jimmy and Sophie from Sydney’s Northern Beaches to Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.
“We wanted to get a foot in the door before the housing market went up and up.”
The decision was based on providing a nice environment for their three children,aged 3,6,and 8,Ms Serrano said,in addition to lifestyle,affordability and health.
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“In Sydney,they come home from kindy and say ‘such-and-such went to Fiji in the school holidays’ and ‘such-and-such went to Hawaii’.
“People are really living at the limits of what they’re earning. There is a lot of competition and keeping up with the Joneses.”