Australian Real Estate Blog
From the category archives:
The Reserve Bank cannot set interest rates solely for NSW. But if it could, rates would be about 2 percentage points lower than they already are, economists say. The Herald has calculated if the banks lowered interest rates by 2 percentage points - NSW borrowers with a $300,000 mortgage would be about $380 a month better off.
A 99-year lease on a majestic, six-bedroom home in Millers Point was sold for $1.5 million on Wednesday, the first of 16 vacant Housing NSW assets to be sold to raise funds for five affordable housing properties for low-income people in the inner west. Christine Andrews, a Department of Housing tenant who lives in Millers Point, said she supported the government selling assets to pay for new public housing.
According to Craig Hadfield, Proprietor of Raine & Horne Callala Bay, his property management team manages 200 permanent rentals and currently only two are vacant. ”However if it’s as much as 20 per cent, this in my opinion makes Callala Beach a property hotspot,” said Mr Hadfield.
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When Terry Tisdale, an engineering entrepreneur, announced he was going to buy a hectare of overgrown land next to Horsley Homestead - one of Sydney’s most outstanding surviving colonial homes - neighbours did their best to warn him against it.
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TWO years have passed since the NSW Government unveiled four major priority areas in the Hunter Region for 19,000 new houses, but they have been caught up in bureaucratic red tape and not one house has been built.
Angus Cooke, of Chesterton International, said the Australian Technology Park was attractive - its feature was the $200 million development of 8 Central Avenue by Rebel Property Group and Seven Network.
The 8 Central Avenue development comprises 38,000 sqm, an 11-storey media and office complex with 12,000 square metres on the top four floors now being pre-leased through CB Richard Ellis and Chesterton Internationa When it is completed in early 2010 rents will be $400 a sqm.
People buying new properties worth up to $500,000 will also be eligible for stamp-duty concessions, meaning they will get up to $42,000 worth of assistance. This means no assistance will be available to people buying properties worth $750,000 or more.
Treasurer Eric Roozendaal has announced the land tax rate for properties worth more than $2.25 million will rise from 1.6 to 2 per cent as part of measures to be introduced in the mini-Budget on Tuesday.
But the peak group for Australian property developers, the Property Council, says the move would be “terribly damaging for NSW”. ”It would mean less people investing in rental accommodation at a time of rental crisis and it would mean a big increase in cost for business at a time when they’re struggling to hold onto staff,” the council’s NSW executive director, Ken Morrison, said. Mr Roozendaal says the decision only affects the top 5 per cent of land owners, but Mr Baird says it could have a devastating knock-on effect on all property investment.
House prices fell 7 per cent in the Lower Hunter in the three months to September, with Port Stephens the worst-hit area, according to Australian Property Monitors.
Sydney rental vacancy rates remain stuck barely above one per cent, while the Illawarra region has worsened, real estate data shows. The Real Estate Institute of NSW figures, released on Wednesday, show Sydney vacancy rates remained static for the third straight month at 1.2 per cent.
