A young woman who was priced out of the Sydney market has bought her first home in Queensland.
Kayla Rogers, 24, an online female weight loss coach, left Sydney in February this year and moved to the Gold Coast, where she is now renting.
Before moving, she enlisted a buyers’ agent to help her settle on a three-bedroom house in Toowoomba, which cost $550,000.
The property is rented out at $450 a week, which Kayla said was helping cover the majority of her mortgage repayments.
‘To buy a house in Sydney is a bit ridiculous. So I was able to buy a three-bedroom house in Toowoomba,’ she said.
She plans to keep buying investment properties while building equity to purchase her dream home.
‘When I’m around 33, I would love to move into my dream home,’ she said.
‘In the meantime, I will get investment properties when I can – maybe every second year.’
Kayla Roger, 25, (pictured) bought her first home in Toowoomba, Queensland, after being priced out of her home city of Sydney
The fitness coach purchased the $550,000 three-bedroom, one bathroom brick house that has substantial front and backyards (pictured) in February this year when she was 24. She was able to get tenants straight away and the value of the property has already increased by seven per cent
Unlike many of her peers, she bought her three-bedroom house entirely on her own, without any financial help from her parents, and was able to save up a 20 per cent deposit of $110,000.
This achievement followed years of working seven days a week and saving diligently while living with her parents, who didn’t charge her any rent.
‘Like anything, if you want something enough, you’ll make the sacrifices and work hard to get there,’ she said.
‘There’s no perfect time and I had funds so I thought I just need to do it.’
Inner Toowoomba’s median house price of $591,433 is almost a third the price of greater Sydney’s mid-point house price of $1.474million, CoreLogic data shows.
It’s also much cheaper than Brisbane’s increasingly unaffordable $973,534 mid-point for a home with a backyard.
Little Real Estate executive general manager of sales and marketing James Kirkland said the interest in Queensland properties from interstate investors has been ‘staggering’.
‘You’ve got young people wanting to get on the property ladder in some of the southern states, in particular from Sydney, who are struggling to do that, ‘ he said.
The coach said she was able to save her 20 per cent deposit by working seven days a week throughout university
‘And I think that’s a prime example of what is driving enquiries up to invest into the Queensland market.’
Mr Kirkland said there are still some great investments across the state, especially houses with backyards that attract strong rental yields.
There is also renewed interest in Brisbane because of the Olympics in 2032.
‘Those areas that are still going strong are just out of that 10km radius of Brisbane, places like Logan,’ he said.
