Wondai, in the centre of Queensland’s South Burnett wine region, is enjoying an economic revival thanks to people passionate about preserving the past, its sense of community, and housing affordability.
Former Sunshine Coast couple Julie and Phil Wagner made an offer on the same day friends sent them a photograph showing the Wondai Hotel up for sale.
Their initial plan after signing a contract on the 1903 building in June last year was to renovate it purely for their retirement home, or a bed and breakfast.
BEFORE: Real estate records show the hotel sold for $450,000 in July 2022.(Supplied: The Wondai Hotel)
But that changed after repeated requests from locals to reopen the pub and six guest rooms.
The Wagners say they had since done about 90 per cent of the renovation themselves, with more work still ahead.
The pub’s old features have been preserved.(Supplied: The Wondai Hotel)
“There has not been a surface that hasn’t been painted or floor that hasn’t been either renewed or redone,” Ms Wagner says.
“She’s just the most beautiful thing and it’s just such a joy to actually live here in it because it’s one of those buildings that just has so much history.”
A replica of Chloe, a painting by Jules Joseph Lefebvre, adorns a wall upstairs.(Supplied: The Wondai Hotel)
Despite Wondai’s real estate values rising 23.9 per cent in the past 12 months, a three-bedroom house can still be purchased for less than $260,000.
The median house price is $303,500 with an average 6 per cent rental yield.
Wondai’s cheapest home on the market is a two-bedroom cottage, priced at $195,000.
This $195,000 two-bedroom cottage is on 1,012 square metres.(Supplied: Freemans Real Estate)
Ms Wagner says the town’s affordability allows people to move to the country, work from home and have a nice lifestyle, instead of being “totally beholden to their mortgage”.
“I said to my husband, in hindsight, we were paying no more, with a finished product, than we would be paying if we lived on the Sunshine Coast in just an ordinary house.”
Their decision not to install poker machines is part of their plan to keep conversations flowing and honour Wondai’s rich sense of community.
Wondai’s timber industry museum was opened in 2001.(ABC Rural: Jennifer Nichols)
Wakka Wakka word for dingo
South Burnett regional councillor Scott Henschen says Wondai’s population has increased by 8.5 per cent — from 1,960 to 2,127 — in the past two years.
The town is on the recreational rail trail, has a wood museum, two sawmills, a trucking company, art gallery, sporting facilities, free camping opposite the Wondai hotel and showground camping.
“It’s a vibrant, buzzing little town,” Cr Henschen says.
“There’s plenty happening not just in everyday life but with developments and infrastructure improvements.”
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David and Tania Earle are passionate about promoting Wondai through workshops that draw in tourists and residents to the saddlery they opened in June 2021.
The couple took a leap of faith when Mr Earle left his lucrative job as a driller in the mining sector to move to Wondai and take up hand-crafting saddles, gun belts, and holsters full time.
David and Tania Earle say saddlery is not a dying art.(ABC Rural: Jennifer Nichols)
“We’d already been running the saddlery from home anyway, so we already had an online presence,” Ms Earle says.
“Nonetheless, it’s very daunting, stepping away from a six-figure income into doing your own business.”
Mr Earle says he has a lengthy waiting list for his custom-made saddles, which took between 40 and 50 hours to craft.
“Everyone seems to think that saddleries are a dying trade but there’s still a large need for saddles here in Australia,” Mr Earle says.
Mr Earle builds the saddles on a wooden tree.(ABC Rural: Jennifer Nichols)
“I’ve currently got more than 15 saddles on the books to be made ranging from our standard stock saddle through to roping saddles, Wade saddles, and we’ve got a couple of cutting saddles to make as well.”
The couple regularly invites champion leather plaiter Chris Barr and his braiding business partner Diana Balhorn to hold whip-making classes.
New generations are showing an interest in learning leather work.(ABC Rural: Jennifer Nichols)
Mr Barr’s most intricate hand-dyed rawhide whips sell for thousands of dollars to international collectors.
Beginners are taught to make four-strand whips, but the strong kangaroo hide can be cut much finer.
“The most strings that I’ve used in a handle on a stockwhip is 96,” Mr Barr says.
“And those strands are about point 6.7 of a millimetre wide.”
The Wondai community welcomes travellers.(ABC Rural: Jennifer Nichols)
Ms Earle says she is enthusiastic about Wondai’s potential and welcoming more tourists.
“We have a free camp, but we’ve also got the showgrounds as well, which have beautiful camping if you don’t want to free camp and lots of Airbnbs, and lots of wineries — it’s a brilliant position to be in.”
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
