Property in Karratha WA, page-11

I wouldn't currently go near the property market in Karratha, unless you were an owner occupier.

The lower end of the market is moving, but this mainly only appears to be to owner occupiers. These buyers are now finding it cheaper to buy than rent.

There is a substantial surplus of property on the market (both for sale and rent) and a quick search on realestate.com.au will show you just how great this surplus is When looking at this surplus you need to keep in mind the size of the permanent population of Karratha which is now circa 10-12k people, give or take a little. Could become less as automation becomes more prevalent in the next 5 - 10 years.

The thing you need to realise about Karratha is that prices were driven by a CONSTRUCTION boom. You had multiple large, labour intensive projects all being undertaken at the same time. There simply was not enough housing for all the CONSTRUCTION workers (residential and FIFO) and, as always with infrastructure, by the time the properties were coming online, the construction phase was ending and these CONSTRUCTION workers were leaving town for their next place of employment.

Something else to keep in mind is that people only move to Karratha for work, business and $$. It is a place very few people, if any, are attracted to as a permanent destination if they aren't seeing fiscal benefits of being in location. You also need to realise that the main employers (Rio, Woodside) own company housing and provide this to their employees.

I could go on and on but I think the above gives you a pretty good overview of the current property situation.