Land sales in the age of COVID-19

Besides the toilet paper crisis, the price of land and finding available land has become a crisis in itself in Covid-19 times.

In June 2020, the Government announced that any build contracts signed after the 4th of June were eligible for a $25,000 HomeBuilder grant. There were conditions attached - the block had to be excavated within 3 months of the date of the signed contract (this has since been extended to 12 months) and the $25,000 was paid when the slab payment had been paid by the bank or owner.

As soon as this was announced land started walking out the door and land prices jumped up.

I have seen a few land estates who previously had land sitting there with offers of rebates and credit cards to entice buyers, go from this situation to having no land to sell at all.

To meet the timeframe of the HomeBuilder grant, the land had to be registered or almost registered, so I saw land jump up in price up to $150,000 more than previously advertised.

This is all great news for the economy, for trades and everyone associated with the building industry. However, it has just made it hard for people who would now like to build to find some land - most stock that is already registered has now gone, there are waitlists for the next stages of estates or all the land has already been sold off the plan.

On 1st January 2021 the HomeBuilder grant was reduced to $15,000 and was available until the end of March 2021.

It has been a great incentive to stimulate the building sector, but the race to own land has become very competitive.

I spoke with Ticker news about this recently…