BROOME’S property and tourism boom, coupled with land access issues, has delivered a lucky hand to the privately owned Broome International Airport Group, the owners of Roebuck Estate.
BROOME’S property and tourism boom, coupled with land access issues, has delivered a lucky hand to the privately owned Broome International Airport Group, the owners of Roebuck Estate.
Since 1998, 520 residential blocks have sold within Roebuck Estate, and there are buyers waiting for the next release in July.
Rob Menzies, executive director projects for Roebuck Estate, said demand is averaging between 80 and 90 lots a year and could reach 100 this year.
BIA Group chief executive officer Kim Maisey said the total sold by the end of the year will represent only 50 per cent of the Roebuck Estate land, and releases will continue for up to six years.
The blocks, two kilometres from the centre of Broome and a similar distance inland from Cable Beach, currently sell for around $80,000. In 1998, they sold for around $55,000.
The estate was originally airport land, purchased in 1991, but when access issues made it difficult for the Shire of Broome to acquire sufficient residential land to satisfy growth demand in the second half of the 1990s, BIA Group success-fully applied for rezoning.
Since then, 60 hectares of the 220-hectare holding have been subdivided.
Land sales peaked in 2001, concurrent with the first home-buyer rebate and prior to the Ansett collapse.
Sales are on the rise again, against a 12-month median house price hike of 31 per cent and a three-month figure of 20 per cent.
While the majority of buyers are Broome residents — typically first homeowners and young families — the estate is not only selling to residential clients.
Private investors leased six custom-modified houses to the Education Department that opened Broome Primary School there as a ‘School in Houses’ in 2000.
The developer built the houses and the department has spent $700,000 establishing a school oval and hard courts adjacent.
Stage One of the $4 million permanent Roebuck Primary School on land owned by the Department of Education and Training will commence in August.
A small village centre square, comprising three R30 density housing and a delicatessen and a video store could be complemented within the coming year by other small commercial ventures within another group housing development.
Tourism in and around the Broome region is also soaring, following overseas epidemic and security scares, and airport upgrades which have prompted both Qantas and Virgin Blue to introduce new services from Melbourne and Adelaide.
Air traffic does not fly over the estate due to the alignment of the airport runway.
“Broome’s growth is directly related to tourism,” Mr Maisey said.
He declined to reveal BIA Group project finance or revenue figures, but for the group’s two major shareholders, the current state of affairs must look promising, if not a winning combination.
