TWO locals in the quiet country town of Chinchilla, in south-east Queensland, have frantically bought up $20 million worth of residential development sites in anticipation of a wave of housing demand from the resources sector.
Businessman Warren Daniells and his cousin Greg West are gambling on the housing needs of the multibillion-dollar coal-seam gas industry in the Surat Basin, including the $35 billion Origin Energy and ConocoPhillips project.
"I haven't got a cent of my super[annuation] fund outside the Surat Basin," Mr Daniells told The Australian Financial Review. "We will never have enough homes here for this boom. We will always be playing catch-up."
The pair's business, Surat Basin Developments, has a $125 million pipeline of residential developments ranging from two-bedroom units to family homes with four bedrooms, two bathrooms and air-conditioning.
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