New Farm: the place no one wanted to be

There was a time, not so long ago, when people would pay good money NOT to live in New Farm. Don’t believe me? Allow me to indulge you with a little story from my early sales days…

18 years ago, I was a young rooster door knocking double-storey brick homes dotting Brisbane’s ‘little Italy’, otherwise known as New Farm. During one of those many routine days, I met a beautiful Italian nonna on Arthur Street who had been living in that very same house since the 1950s. We were having a chat over a cup of tea and she said to me, “I would tell all my children that if they worked and studied hard, one day they would get out of New Farm”.

As one of Brisbane’s oldest suburbs, hectares of rich land was farmed where some of the city’s most expensive homes now stand. The New Farm & Districts Historical Society speaks of convict links, a once semi-rural retreat for well-heeled families making way for gentleman’s villas and worker’s cottages, and finally much of the area becoming working class (industrial and shipping).

The ‘80s was a real lowlight, a grungy period in New Farm’s growth where prostitution and drugs ran rife, and no one with an ounce of dignity wanted a bar of the place. Yet it wasn’t to last of course, as urban renewal right across the peninsula erased the cringe-factor and attracted the right type of attention from those desiring inner-city convenience.

A News Corp article, dated May 13, 2016, speaks to this urban renewal of Fortitude Valley, New Farm, Teneriffe and Newstead, citing a Queensland University of Technology report.

“A study by Queensland University of Technology property economic lecturer Lyndall Bryant says the area has been transformed from industrial wasteland and unsavoury neighbourhoods into one of the city’s most sought-after residential, entertainment and business precincts.

“More than $86 million of federal, state and local government funds were spent in five years through the Better Cities program in the early 1990s, and that has unlocked more than $5.3 billion of private-sector investment there since.”

Of course, since the article was written, New Farm and the likes have continued to transform into the world-class destination hub they represent today (think James St). In the past financial year, I sold an unrenovated Queenslander on the river for $20.5M. That number alone speaks to the gentrification of the area.

This was the first Brisbane market to really heat up, and it’ll be the last to cool.

I hope you enjoy the read.

Matt Lancashire