Home
Landlords
Tenants
Sellers
Buyers
Project Marketing
News
About Us
Bees Nees City Realty
The Buzz
Posted by Rob Honeycombe on 25 August 2010

The boost to the First Home Owner grant was an important part of the government response to the GFC in 2009 and there’s no doubt it kept that sector of the market moving. The boost finished but the grant remains at $7,000.

During this recent election campaign the Real Estate Institute of Australia was pushing for the grant to be permanently upped to $15,000, noting that a decade’s passed since the amount was set and in that time Australia’s median house prices have jumped from $220,000 to $519,000. So when introduced the grant was 3.2% of a home price and is now 1.5%.

The other idea the Institute has been running is for first home buyers to be able to access their voluntary superannuation (not employer contributed funds) to buy a home.

“The REIA proposes that a scheme be established which would encourage young Australians to contribute to voluntary superannuation by allowing access to these resources for the purposes of raising a deposit for a first home. The scheme would be an adjunct to the First Home Savers Account but would allow flexibility for the saver to decide whether all or part of the voluntary superannuation payments was needed to augment the home purchase.”

We remember visiting pollies in the mid 1990’s as part of an Institute push for policy change for a similar idea back then. Nothing changed and from what we can tell neither of the major parties have had much time for this idea now.

We’re not sure how many buyers would take advantage of it, but to have a great tax vehicle like super as the place to save for your home seems a great idea.

Your thoughts?

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, property taxes and rates etc | No Comments »

Posted by admin on 19 August 2010

We often feel we’re at the pointy end of body corp issues,  the time when apartments are put up for sale and the market makes a judgement. There’s no better way of finding out if your body corp fees are too high, your building’s not maintained well enough, the sinking fund’s too low or the AGM and owner relationships are just plain dysfunctional. Buyers can be brutal in their assessment and they’re entitled to be when they’re spending their money. And one issue has been making apartment buyers nervous across Queensland.

We’re delighted to see Fair Trading Minister Peter Lawlor’s move to amend the Act and bring back some predictability to body corp fees. The current Act says lot entitlements must be equal unless you have a good reason and despite knowing the fees when buying in, there’s been a run of apartment owners over recent years going to the Tribunal to ask for a reshuffling of lot entitlements (the numbers used to set your fees). Their own fees have gone down at the expense of their neighbours and in some cases resulted in penthouse owners getting a whopping discount, 1 bedder owners a skyrocketing bill. It made headlines early last year when shots were fired in one Gold Coast building.

The proposed amendments are open for public consultation until September 23rd, and when adopted will lock-in your lot entitlements. Developers will again set interest entitlements according to value of the apartment (as they used to) and we’d expect levies will pretty much follow suit. And importantly the Minister is stopping the ability to move the goalposts later.

Mr Lawlor says, “In the future, the ability to adjust contribution schedule lot entitlements will be limited to all lot owners in a scheme unanimously agreeing to make an adjustment through a resolution without dissent or by unanimous agreement between two or more lot owners to redistribute the lot entitlements for their lots amongst themselves.”

Nice to see some common sense prevailing.

Has your building had its lot entitlements changed? We’d love to hear your experiences.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, property taxes and rates etc | No Comments »

Posted by admin on 6 August 2010

Today’s Friday so here’s the best of the emailed jokes we’ve seen this week!

I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize;

Half the people you know are below average.

A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.

All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.

The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.

I intend to live forever…. so far, so good.

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread

If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?

Tags:
Posted in just for fun! | No Comments »

Posted by admin on 30 July 2010

We attended a Macquarie Bank seminar this week where their Rod Cornish detailed historical stats and some forecasts on our property market. One tidbit that stood out was this gem: in the past 25 years Brisbane’s annual median house price went down just twice. In 1993 and in 2009. So in 23 of 25 years our median price went up.

There’s good reason residential property is considered “safe as houses”.

Ask a banker which security they’ll lend on. Residential property is king to them. We understand the merit of a balanced portfolio but do sometimes wonder if some investors have simply forgotten the strength of property?

For those of us too time-poor to track and research, property doesn’t rely on scientific analysis to determine the right time to buy or sell. Rismark’s Christopher Joye says price volatility of property is just 3 or 4% compared with 19% for shares. It’s no surprise you may be feeling giddy watching the All Ords of late.

Matusik Property Insight’s Michael Matusik says Australians on average hold 80% equity in their dwellings, and higher for their principal place of residence. There’s no great risk in that and shows the strength of our nation compared to others. Our love affair with bricks and mortar does continue, even if some of us have had a wandering eye in recent years.

Tags: , ,
Posted in trends in Brisbane property | No Comments »

Posted by Rob Honeycombe on 12 July 2010

Would two per cent make a difference? If your preferred holiday was $3000 or $3060 it wouldn’t matter. And $1,000 wouldn’t stop you buying your favourite $50,000 car. But in a property market like Brisbane’s inner city is currently experiencing, home buyers and investors alike seem reluctant to make offers. One told me last week that a $500,000 Brisbane apartment they’d seen was too dear. “Not worth more than $490,000”, they said. For others it’s just 3 or 4 per cent ‘overpricing’ that stops them buying. So in this newsletter we thought we’d remind everyone about an idea called “making an offer”!

Sellers are sometimes reluctant to drop their listed price until they’ve seen the colour of buyers’ money and a real estate agent can’t offer you the property at a price cheaper than authorised by their client. They need to be careful in encouraging you without harming their sellers’ interests. And some buyers feel embarrassed and awkward suggesting an offer. Maybe they’re concerned they’ll offend the real estate agent (hard to do in our opinion!) So the standoff drags on.

We’re currently watching some inner-Brisbane properties sit on the market without action, even when their prices seem pretty close to the mark. Maybe it’s the internet gone mad. Buyers can sit back with the property portals and, with plenty of accuracy in many cases, forecast a home’s true value. There’s danger for sellers in staying on the market too long so they need to monitor the activity at their inspections and have an agent whose feedback they trust. The Bees Nees team had an average discount from asking price to selling price of just over 1% in the past 12 months – we’ve been negotiating great results for our clients. But right now the market’s sensitivity to price seems to be at an all time high. An auction can help avoid the price problem but it’s not, in our opinion, the right solution for every property.

One final thought: for those of you who’ve owned your home for more than 5 years just think back to the day you bought it for a moment. Would you have paid another 2% to get the right place? We always get the same response to this question!

How do you set the right price? We’d love to have your comments.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, real estate marketing | No Comments »

Posted by admin on 3 July 2010

Recently we met with a home owner who proudly fished into a drawer and produced her stiff, creased and blotted old title deed. It had been a family milestone in the late 1980’s when they’d paid off the house and cleared the mortgage. And there was something special about holding that grubby piece of paper. Of course titles have been recorded in a database in Queensland since 1994 but if you still have your old deed you can hang on to it – until you sell of course!

When we’re drawing up contracts buyers often wonder why the home’s title is described as being in the County of Stanley and Parish of South Brisbane for example. The historical description dates from our English heritage and Brisbane sits in the County of Stanley, so-named for Edward the British PM of the 1850’s and 1860’s. Remember Queensland’s birth was 1859. Apparently our state now has 322 Counties, further split into 5,319 Parishes, but of course the use of these two terms has only ever related to property titles.

It seems an antiquated idea and maybe it’ll be changed in years to come. We know first hand though the importance of getting a property’s legal description spot on. This salesperson sold a vacant block of land in 1991 to a keen buyer who discovered just prior to settlement (whew!) that it was next door to the one he thought he was buying. Older readers might even remember a certain Minister of the Crown who got his own properties mixed up in a sale too – embarrassing when your own portfolio covers the Titles Registry!

Tags: ,
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, real estate marketing | No Comments »

Posted by admin on 2 July 2010

We rarely repeat articles from other blogs but this one is a gem! Teresa Boardman is an American Realtor in St Paul, Minnesota, and a great writer. Plenty of Brisbane parents could share the sentiment of this story!!

Dear person in their twenties,

It is wonderful that you got that new job and were able to move out of your folks place a mere eight years after you graduated from college. I know you will be turning 30 this year and you have accomplished much in your short life.

Your parents love you, we always have and we would do most anything for you and we probably have and we are very proud of you.

There is one thing that you need to know. We are not being honest with you about something. We have kept a secret from you all these years, and it has nothing to do with auntie Sue or that one incident a few years back at the water park. We know you did not do that on purpose.

We want to tell you that we are very tired of the boxes and storage bins in the basement and the bike, sports equipment and roller blades in the garage. We understand that you also regret having purchased that tacky piece of furniture that you bought the first time you moved out but left stored in the basement this last time you moved out. We hate it too, and yes you may move back in that is true, even though we had the locks changed and you know the secret about the back door, you will find a way, but I suspect you won’t want to use the furniture as you seem to hate it so.

Even though we love you and would do most anything for you we don’t want to provide storage for your stuff anymore. We would like to use our basements and garages and attics for something else now. We have our own tacky furniture that needs to be stored and most of our closets are over flowing as we have not moved in years and have not had any place to put anything in decades.

It would be heavenly to be able to walk to the washer without tripping over something and honestly the furnace and water heater have always wanted a room of their own, they watch and wait silently as the stuff piles up around them. Last time we had a repair man here he couldn’t even find the furnace, I guess he wasn’t much of a repair man. I never saw him leave the house, he may still be down in the basement looking for the furnace, I guess we don’t know for sure, but hope not because they charge by the hour.

Please come over for dinner tonight. We promise to cook something you really like, and buy a couple of bottles of wine, or maybe you would enjoy a beer instead. Bring a friend or significant other and a moving van. We will even front you the cash so that you can rent it. After dinner kindly remove your stuff. Don’t make me have to write this twice. I may be old but I am still your mother and even though you are bigger than I am I can still kick your butt, or at the very least make you feel guilty.

Thanks, your loving mother.

PS if you read this after the garage sale please accept my apologies, I know I should have sent a text message but for some things 140 characters are not enough.

Oh and while I am at it I would not mind being a grandmother some day. I saved your crib and pookie your stuffed rabbit just in case.

Tags:
Posted in just for fun! | No Comments »

Posted by admin on 2 July 2010

Fridays are for fun so here’s the best of the bunch we’ve seen on email this week. And yes we’d love to hear your clean joke!

1) Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting a tomato in a fruit salad.

2) The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

3) Children: You spend the first two years of their life teaching them how to walk and talk. The next sixteen? Spent telling them to sit down and shut up.

4) He who smiles in a crisis has found someone to blame.

5) If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.

6) To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

7) I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

8) Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

9) We live in a society where pizza gets to your house faster than the police.

10) A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

11) How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

12) I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.

13) A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

14) The shinbone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.

15) Laugh at your problems, everybody else does.

16) Did you know that dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish?.

17) Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

18) Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.

19) A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.

20) Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.

21) I discovered I scream the same way whether I’m about to be devoured by a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot.

22) War does not determine who is right. It determines who is left.

Tags:
Posted in just for fun! | No Comments »

Posted by admin on 30 June 2010

Brisbane CBD’s Soleil Apartments are rising quickly on Adelaide Street, with the Meriton team adding another floor at a rate of about 1 every 10 days! Our team had a quick hard hat tour today and there’s no doubt this will be an impressive building when it’s completed.

Meriton have sold a good number of the apartments and it’s encouraging to see their cranes on the city skyline. There’s not many others under construction!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Brisbane CBD, Brisbane's sales market | No Comments »

Posted by admin on 20 June 2010

Negotiating with buyers is a skill-set that real estate agents really need to improve. In our opinion this is a key part of the service we’re paid for: the ability to secure our seller clients a higher price and on better terms. So if you’re about to sell your property ask your preferred agent to demonstrate their negotiating skills – before you appoint them.

And one area often overlooked in getting an offer from a buyer is a sizeable deposit. In new projects developers ask for 10% so why do agents and sellers often settle for a measly couple of thousand dollars? Buyers may not have buckets of cash lying in their account but if they aren’t prepared to put down a large amount (and closer to 5% where at all possible) the seller must ask: “Should I take my property off the market while we wait to see if they will settle?” A contract is a legal commitment but money held as deposit is the real show of good faith.

Even in more balanced markets like we have now, a seller should expect this from a buyer. Time on the market is critical and if they have finance limitations or are going to have second thoughts it’s better you know up front. And a tip for buyers – if you offer a decent deposit it may help you secure a better price.

PS: We have a bunch of Frequently Asked Questions like this on our website for sellers, landlords, buyers and tenants. Have a sticky-beak.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, real estate marketing | No Comments »

« Older Entries