Head due south from Brisbane, over the Story Bridge, past the Gabba, through Mount Gravatt with its showgrounds and the culinary wonderland of Sunnybank, and pretty soon the houses start thinning out.
Keep going through Jimboomba and Beaudesert and within 90 minutes you reach a long, currently dry, strip of Scenic Rim towns where the real estate industry moves at a snail’s pace.
In a few tiny hamlets like Innisplain, Tamrookum and Oaky Creek, a single property changes hands about as often as the NRL premiership.
As opposed to the torrent of sales in crane-filled suburbs such as Newstead, South Brisbane and the CBD, these are among the most tightly held suburbs in all of Greater Brisbane.
Cathy Snip has been in the Beaudesert district for at least 45 years and selling rural, residential, commercial and industrial properties for 32.
She said there were quite a lot of sales in those tightly held suburbs after the dairy industry was deregulated in the early 2000s, and the horse industry flourished soon after.
But Domain data shows only one sale for tiny Tamrookum (population 91) and eight for Innisplain stretching back to 2010. Nearby Oaky Creek (10) and Rathdowney (24) don’t move much faster.
Although the drought had been tough, Ms Snip said in normal conditions the area enjoyed good rainfall and was served by reliable creeks, rivers and bores. Generally, people tended to feel like the district was “an important part of their life” and didn’t want to leave.
“If you haven’t been here 50 or 60 years you’re still a newcomer, yeah,” the Rathdowney resident said.
“And I think that goes without saying in any of the small country, you know, the smaller country towns.”
An 80-year-old Innisplain woman who didn’t want her name shared still thinks of herself as an out-of-towner after 25 years with her husband on their 27.5-hectare property.
Asked why people stayed put, the retiree insisted she was really a New South Welshwoman and wouldn’t be much help.
“You’re probably better off getting on to someone who’s lived here for donkey’s years,” she said.
There’s a single property for sale in Innisplain at the moment — a relatively small nine-hectare lot with horse yards, fenced shelters and a low-set, four-bedroom brick home through Cathy Snip Family Realty.
In a suburb that’s 2011 population of 463 was slashed to 85 by a fairly dramatic boundary redistribution in the 2016 census, there have only been eight properties sold since 2010.
But Ms Snip said the entire Beaudesert region was changing and recent sales had been stronger elsewhere in the area, including redevelopments in town.
“There’s been a slow availability of properties coming on the market,” Ms Snip said.
“The demand outweighs the availability. There’s more people who want them than what is out there for sale, and there’s more coming on.
“I think … rural [the property market] has not been very favourable, probably the past four or five years.
“In as much that people wanted [to buy], but it was very hard to get loans.”
A dig through the Greater Brisbane region suburbs where people are least likely to sell up reveals a few constants.
The Scenic Rim situation is almost mirrored to Brisbane’s north-west, where tiny hamlets like Split Yard Creek and Mount Delaney house only a few dozen people.
At first glance, relatively central Brisbane suburbs like Enoggera Reservoir and Eagle Farm seem like odd additions to the list but the reservoir itself dominates its namesake suburb and Eagle Farm is inhabited mostly by horses, not people.
“When you think of it it’s not really a suburb, is it,” said Alma Clark, who runs an eponymous real estate agent in the area.
“It’s just Eagle Farm racecourse and then surrounded by Hendra, Ascot, Hamilton.
“I’ve been selling in the area there for 30-odd years and I can’t remember a house coming up and saying it’s Eagle Farm.”
It takes a trip to Laidley, deep in the Lockyer Valley “salad bowl”, to find any suburbs with both a few thousand people and uncharacteristically low property sales.
Laidley itself is actually a little bit larger than inner-city Lutwyche but in the past three years its residents successfully offloaded their homes or properties at about a sixth of the speed. Several surrounding suburbs were similarly slow.
In Lutwyche, one in every 6.6 people sold their home over the past 10 years. In Laidley it was one in 46.
Elders Laidley agent Dannina Penson described a “tight” community with many generations of families, some who would grow up on the farm and then retire to small acreage at Laidley Heights.
Retirees had been the most common newcomers to the area during her time selling.
“People seem to migrate from Laidley to Bribie [Island] or Bribie to Laidley, seems to be the crossover there,” she said.
“So you’ll find it’s the treechangers seeking that sea change.
“That’s sort of predominantly why they would leave the area, or work.”
Source: Domain By Story by JORGE BRANCO