Australia’s Mining Bust Town Reawakens – Bloomberg – Bloomberg

A mining port facility in Port Hedland, Australia.

House-buyers seeking a bargain amid the wreckage of Australias mining boom might want to get in quick.

Port Hedland, a shipping hub for the Pilbara iron ore region in Western Australia, saw house prices collapse nearly 70 percent in the past four years as workers lost their jobs and left amid theend of a resources investment boom. But prices there have reached a bottom and are now even rising.

"Were starting to get multiple offers on properties," said Peter Dunning, a real estate agentat Ray White Group in Port Hedland, who says local values have risen about A$50,000 ($37,470) in the past six months."People realized that prices had got so cheap, they probably werent going to get any cheaper. So they started buying.

The most important business stories of the day.

Get Bloomberg's daily newsletter.

Brighter spots in housing is one of three chunks of evidence adding to a growing sense that Australias resource-based economies are improving. The Reserve Bank of Australias liaison with businesses and its data analysis show emerging signs that the Queensland and Western Australian slowdowns are coming to an end, it said earlier this month. The regions jobs markets, meanwhile, showed a healthy pickup in April.

The recent commodities rally has laid a foundation for recovery. While the price of iron ore -- Australias biggest export -- has slipped after unexpectedly rebounding toward the end of last year, it remains well above the lows beneath $40 seen in late 2015. Still, there is potential for the steel-making metal to fall further as no.1 trading partner China stockpiles its holdings.

Port Hedland last month approved BHP Billiton Ltd.s request to boost the amount of iron ore it ships through the port by 5 million tons to 275 million tonnes a year, after the miner initially sought an increase to 290 million tons. The coal-mining state of Queensland, meanwhile, is starting to reap benefits from large-scale liquefied natural gas projects coming on stream.

A CoreLogic report earlier this month found that many mining towns across Australia were seeing sales volumes of houses lift and the rate of price declines starting to slow. But its still a far cry from the good times, when median prices in the fly-ridden, cyclone-prone outpost of Karratha, the Pilbaras biggest town, topped Sydneys by 49 percent.

Read more about the peak of Western Australias housing boom

Nobodys expecting a return to the boom years, when mining workers with no degrees were commanding salaries akin to that of Wall Street bankers. The bonanza lasted for much of the decade though 2012. But recent green shoots bolster the RBAs case that the unwinding of the mining investment boom is almost done, as the central bank seeks to diversify the economy toward services industries.

Drivers of growth in mining states appear to be broader-based than just commodities. Western Australia is getting a A$2.3 billion overhaul of its roads and rails, with a new 60,000-seat stadium also under construction, while works are well underway on Queenslands Gold Coast in preparation for the city hosting next years Commonwealth Games.

Queensland has got a pretty good spread of industries, for example tourism and education, so once the worst of this mining pullback is done, then the prospects are pretty good," said Steven Milch, chief economist at Suncorp Corporate Services Pty.

Deloitte Access Economics is also optimistic about Queensland. It forecasts the north-east state to grow 4.5 percent in fiscal 2018, outstripping New South Waless 3 percent and Victorias 3.4 percent.Growth in Western Australia, the state hardest hit by the mining downturn, is tipped to accelerate from 0.2 percent in fiscal 2018 to 2.2 percent the next year.

Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. gave a tempered assessment in a May survey:"While activity in Western Australia continues to expand well below trend pace, the weight of the downturn is lifting." The banks Queensland index also improved, but it said that labor-market slack was still a drag on economic activity.

April data showed improvement in the resource states job markets. Queensland added a net 62,100 roles in the six months through April, the most of any state during the period. Western Australias jobless rate dropped 0.6 percentage points to 5.9 percent, the biggest decline in almost two years.

"It is busy over here," said Guy Fulcher, a recruitment consultant at Zenith Search agency in Perth. "Its been slowly picking up in the past 12 months. Its still nowhere near where it was in the boom time, but compared with how quiet it was, its a lot better."

With soaring property prices in Sydney and Melbourne far out of reach for many workers, some economists also expect to see northward migration to Queensland increase. That might go some way to easing an apartment supply glut in Brisbane, which the RBA has identified as a significant restraint on prices in the states biggest city.

Its still a stretch to suggest that resurgent mining states can pick up Australias growth baton should east-coast property markets stutter.

Back in Port Hedlands real estate market, Dunning saidhes also seen a sharp drop in rental vacancies, usually a sign that employers are in hiring mode, while buyer demand is almost entirely from owner-occupiers. He says the real gains wont come until a different type of bargain hunter reappears.

Nothing will happen dramatically until the investors start to come back,"said Dunning. For investors, Port Hedland has got a skull and crossbones on it.

Here is the original post:

Australia's Mining Bust Town Reawakens - Bloomberg - Bloomberg