NSW

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. 

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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.

abc.net.au

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.

au.biz.yahoo.com

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.

theherald.com.au

Peter Gibbs bought a four-bedroom house for $120,000 in a city where the median price is about double that. Next door, his 80-year-old neighbour and friend, John Hill, is to be uprooted after 40 years in his public housing home to create another bargain for a private owner/occupier. more

APPROVALS to build private homes in NSW have plunged to their lowest level in nearly half a century, new figures show.

Amid higher borrowing costs and high home prices relative to incomes, 1150 private houses were approved in NSW last month, the lowest number since 1964, discontinued figures from the Bureau of Statistics obtained by UBS show.

Highlighting the magnitude of the housing squeeze under way, NSW had to house roughly half the population in the 1960s that it has to house now - 4 million people versus 7 million. read more

AS families struggle paying peak prices for rents due to record low housing levels, the State Government’s grand plan for new cities containing 160,000 homes is gathering dust.

Not one sod of dirt has been turned on Sydney’s promised lands, despite the Government guaranteeing the first homes by 2007. read more

THE woes in sections of Australia’s housing market have broken out of the auction rooms and bludgeoned the profits of one of the country’s biggest developers.

Mirvac, best known for its upmarket apartment projects, said yesterday that about half of the $400 million it would write off the value of its $7.5 billion property portfolio was in its residential development division.

Mirvac group managing director Greg Paramor said: “The housing market in NSW has been a rock around our necks.”

Mirvac’s experience is symptomatic of the housing market: a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly.

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The days of selling a home and paying huge commissions to real estate agents for the privilege are finally over, thanks to a new company that gives vendors greater control in the overall process and simply charges them a flat fee, irrespective of the sale price.

Nocommission.com.au, founded by Harry Brigden, a former executive of online stockbroking firm ETRADE Australia, is set to take the real estate market by storm by offering vendors a low-cost selling option that will save them thousands of dollars on what they would have been charged in commissions by another agent.
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