It's one of the last remaining coastal suburbs in Queensland where you can buy a beachside block of land for under $300,000.
Just four-and-a-half hours drive north of Brisbane, Elliott Heads in the Bundaberg region is known for its sweeping white sandy beaches and idyllic weather.
But the seaside haven that is home to 1,160 people is earmarked to undergo a major metamorphosis that has been decades in the making.
Work has started on the $2 billion master-planned community South Beach that was the brainchild of local macadamia farmer John Manera.
"It took me over 27 years to actually accumulate this land, and when I bought the last farm I thought well maybe I could do something for the community here one day," he said.
That dream is now becoming a reality, with groundwork starting on the first stage of the 2,000 residential lot development.
Residential lots were selling from $224,000 and South Beach development director Helen Blackburn said they were going quick.
"We released stage one to sell off the plan in December of last year and we sold [out] in one day, so 33 lots sold in one day," Ms Blackburn said.
"We then released stages two and three in February this year and sold 101 lots in a week … so it has just gone nuts."
The master plan — which appears to have the support of local residents — includes zoning for a shopping precinct, a 320-lot retirement village and a nursing home to be developed in coming years.
"It's been about 17 years in the making to get it to this point," Mr Manera said.
"The goal is to do something for the community, and make it all work, make everybody happy."
He said the most important thing to him was that the younger generation had somewhere to "have a good life and a good time".
The large scale of the development would also create more jobs in the area.
Ms Blackburn said there had been a lot of interest from buyers from further south.
"There are a lot of people moving up here from the Sunshine Coast … they have found that Elliott Heads is the next Noosa for them," she said.
"It is a quiet little village and it's beautiful here, you know your neighbours and you can get down to the beach … it is idyllic."
Changing market for the regions
Data released by CoreLogic showed regional housing prices dropped by 1.5 per cent in August.
Head researcher Eliza Owen said the fall was tacked onto a rise in interest rates and the behaviour of capital city markets.
"This is really the effect of rising interest rates starting to impact people's borrowing capacity and willingness to pay across different parts of Australia," Ms Owen said.
"The fact that we've seen three successive rate rises of 0.5 per cent means this is going to start impacting those markets pretty rapidly."
While the decline in property prices may pale in comparison to the 41 per cent upswing felt after the pandemic, Ms Owen said it was a sign of what was to come.
"It's not unusual for cap cities to be a little bit of a bellwether for what happens in the region," Ms Owen said.
"Regional markets usually lag capital cities in reaction to interest rates, because generally they're not quite as pricey as what you see in cap cities."
There are forecasts prices could fall by as much as 20 per cent next year.
But AusWide bank managing director Martin Barrett said regional cities would not experience the same declines as capital cities.
"I expect that we'll see property prices in Bundaberg kind of level off but I'm not expecting that Bundy prices will materially kind of contract," Mr Barrett said.
"The reason for that is we've got strong levels of rental demand.
"We've also got property prices that still remain relatively low compared to many places in Australia and particularly those big capital cities."
Ms Owen said despite the market lagging that of capital cities, regional Queenslanders could expect property prices to continue to fall as long as interest rates kept rising.
"For some of these smaller markets you could expect more of a reasonable downswing, just given the fact that their slower prices generally make them slower, steadier performers," she said.
"Overall, I think property prices are going to continue declining as long as we see upward shifts in the cash rate, and the cash rate is expected to peak in early 2023 at this stage."
