Griffith University, Australia’s fastest-growing campus, is poised to deliver a $232 million injection into the local economy, on top of a planned outlay of $60 million on major projects. Gold Coast campus provost, Professor Max Standage, said apart from expenditure on major projects, the university would pay more than 1000 staff more than $84.4 million in salaries in 2009. [click to continue...]
Communities for old farts
The largest gated retirement community in the world, it has 75,000 inhabitants on 8000 hectares, with dozens of separate, walled districts connected by more than 100 kilometres of golf cart trails. Billed as a $500 million child-free community for over-45s, the Aurora development was to include 102 waterfront, lakeside and lifestyle homes, as well as resort-like sporting facilities and on-site medical services. [click to continue...]
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GE sells Wizard to Aussie Home Loans
GE Money Australia and New Zealand will sell its Wizard Home Loans brand and franchise network in Australia to Aussie Home Loans for an undisclosed amount. As part of the deal, Commonwealth Bank of Australia will acquire up to $4 billion of mortgages originated by Wizard, GE Money said in a statement on Wednesday. [click to continue...]
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High interest rates took toll on families
In the three months since the Reserve Bank started cutting the official cash rate in September, repayments on a $250,000 mortgage have fallen about $500 a month - more than enough for many borrowers to have avoided repossession.
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Expats may revive QLD property market
Queensland real-estate agents are confident the worsening economic crisis offshore will drive Australians back for a bargain. Real Estate Institute of Queensland chairman Peter McGrath said property sales to cashed-up expats were definitely on the agenda of many agents and he had recommended agents boost overseas marketing campaigns.
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Year of the U-turn
The 2008 year will go down as the year of the RBA’s big U-turn on monetary policy, when rates fell from a 12-year high to the lowest level in 35 years. Westpac Banking Corporation chief economist Bill Evans says the RBA overtightened monetary policy, but added “that’s always how monetary policy works”. [click to continue...]
Holiday home sales slide ahead of peak selling season
Alan Crossman, principal of Ray White Real Estate in Port Douglas, says sales of holiday homes have been suffering for the past 12 months. [click to continue...]
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Double Trouble in Double Bay
Woollahra mayor Andrew Petrie said it was extraordinary that, after approving and gazetting council’s much lower building height restrictions only a few years ago, the State Government would now ignore them and assess this project under Part 3A of the Planning Act. [click to continue...]
White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire
When his Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., told him that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history. Mr. Bush did foresee the danger posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants.
The president spent years pushing a recalcitrant Congress to toughen regulation of the companies, but was unwilling to compromise when his former Treasury secretary wanted to cut a deal. As early as 2006, top advisers to Mr. Bush dismissed warnings from people inside and outside the White House that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming.
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Melbourne’s property market
With a growth rate in values of 3 per cent (a slight fall in real terms), it was a big come-down from the seemingly endless growth of the 1990s. But Melbourne’s price increase was level with the country’s and it managed to outperform Sydney and Perth, where prices dropped by between 3 per cent and 4 per cent, with more pain predicted for next year. [click to continue...]
