Aussie real estate agents now millionaires thanks to booming property market

The Australian property boom has created a new group of real estate agent millionaires with 45 of them bringing home 1 million Australian dollars (750,000 U.S. dollars) in commissions in the last financial year.

NewsCorp quoting figures from Australasia's largest real estate group Ray White Group said another 278 agents earned more than 500,000 Australian dollars (377,467 dollars) in the year to June, as 355 billion Australian dollars (268 billion dollars) worth of homes were sold across Australia.

"It was one of the golden years," Ray White group chairman Brian White said on Monday.

"People that have believed in property have been amply rewarded. The current low-interest rates had a remarkable impact on affordability. At the old interest rates there would have been problems," he said.

The estimated value of home sales that settled over the past financial year rose 8 percent to 330 billion Australian dollars (249 billion dollars) properties sold in the 2015 financial year.

For Sydney, the wave of activity came after a long dry spell, Jason Anderson, chief economist of research and advisory firm MacroPlan said.

"The last few years was manna from heaven in that there was a long period in Sydney of low price growth and low turnover," Anderson said.

But the strongest boom, experienced in Sydney and Melbourne, was tampering with affordability issues, capping prices and turnover, he said.

The surge in prices and demand had also fuelled the pay packets of building companies, tradesmen, construction workers and others employed in the housing and construction sector, Anderson said.

Of the estimated 355 billon Australian dollars (268 billion U.S. dollars) or 700,000 residential sales settled in the year to June, Anderson said about 100 billion Australian dollars (75.49 billion dollars) were in newly built apartments and houses.

However, Ray White Bankstown agent Jennifer Khoury, who became a millionaire through the commissions she earned from selling 80 homes in Sydney's southwest in the last financial year, said she expects to maintain her sales level in the coming months.

Another listed real estate agent McGrath reported a 41 percent rise in revenue to 121 million Australian dollars (91.35 million dollars) for the financial year but has seen its shares marked down on fears of a housing market downturn.

Ray White sold 44 billion Australian dollars' (33 billion dollars) worth of homes in Australia and New Zealand last year in 74,000 sales, an increase of 5 percent from the previous year.Enditem