Secret Spy Base Boosts Local Property Market

Alice Springs has seen an upswing in market activity recently, thanks to its resident secret spy base.

Shrouded in mystery for many Australians, Pine Gap is a joint United States-Australia military spy base, and according to reports, it’s been driving up the local property rental market.

Changes to Pine Gap’s employment provisions, which formally supplied housing for its employees, now mean they must rent or buy their own accommodation.

But if you ask Andrew Doyle from the Real Estate Institute of the Northern Territory he says the biggest changes to the local property market has been changes in the first home buyers grant. Not the impact of Pine Gap.

“The real impact of the changes from Pine Gap is the increase of employees entering the rental market,” Doyle said.

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The changes have also seen a greater number of Defence housing stock released to market over the past 12 months.

Pine Gap has also garnered attention of global media giant Netflix, with a six-part political thriller series of the same name.

The new show, which probes the allegiance between Australia and the US at the spy base facility, also positions Australia as ripe to produce original content for the streaming giant.

In a joint production between Netflix and the ABC, filming of the first series will take place in Adelaide and parts of the Northern Territory.

Production of the Netflix series ushered multimillion-dollar investment in South Australia as well as generating local jobs.

The six-part series, “Pine Gap” created by Greg Haddrick and co-writer Felicity Packard, is said to reveal hidden secrets of Australia’s top international defence facility.