Posted by admin on 19 December 2011
Like a kid who can’t wait to grow up, inner-Brisbane’s property owners are wishing the days away to the start of a fresh year. The market soothsayers are surprisingly quiet about the prospects for 2012 – and probably because 2011 caught so many of them out. Here’s a quick recap:
1. Home prices in inner-Brisbane can drop when the experts least expect. After a mini-recovery in 2010 median prices dipped further this year (“officially” around 6-7% but with plenty of variation between suburbs and price brackets).
2. Home owners will choose to stay put. During 2011 sales volumes in most inner-Brisbane suburbs dropped to their lowest in over a decade, with many not willing to sell for less. Just 12 months ago it seemed likely we’d have a busier market, with good job security giving buyers confidence to upgrade and move. Few predicted the economic uncertainties of 2011 (or the daily in-your-face negativity of that bloke on the Today Show amongst others).
3. A tight supply of rental homes has not led to strong rises in rents (yet). Rents grew 4% in the June quarter but have otherwise been fairly flat in Brisbane’s inner-suburbs this year. Remember the post-floods hysteria with predictions of rent blow-outs? This subdued market hasn’t surprised us – most landlords are not wealthy and become very cautious with rent increases and potential vacancies when there’s economic uncertainty.
4. We can use our money wisely. Many of us are taking advantage of interest rate cuts to pay down debt, building equity without price growth.
So bring it on 2012, we’re ready for you. Inner-Brisbane’s home-owners have had a tough year but we’re in good shape for anything you can throw at us!
Posted in Brisbane landlords, Brisbane's rental market, Brisbane's sales market | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 14 December 2011
Bees Nees team member Rob Honeycombe has been appointed to the board of the Real Estate Institute of Australia. Rob was recently re-elected to his position on the Queensland Institute and has been asked to represent the state as a director with the national body. Queensland’s Pam Bennett was recently elected President of the REIA and the board meets regularly in Canberra.
Rob says it’s an opportunity for Bees Nees clients to have a say. The REIA provides research and well-informed advice to the Federal Government, Opposition, the real estate profession, media and the public on a range of issues affecting the property market.
“There’s plenty of hot topics coming up as we inevitably move to a more national approach to property. The REIA is lobbying for a raft of changes including improvements to the supply chain for housing, and giving first home buyers access to their super. Scrapping state stamp duties might seem like a pie-in-the-sky concept but plenty of positive changes start that way.”
Tags: Real Estate Institute of Australia, Real Estate Institute of Queensland
Posted in property taxes and rates etc | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 5 December 2011
Of all the market segments across Australia and around the world, high-end properties are possibly faring worse than most. If you just had a lazy $5million there’d be some great buying around….
PropertyObserver.com.au reports one southern group is aiming to take advantage of the opportunity, launching a $30milion unit trust to buy up prestige residences. Properties will be in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane – possibly Noosa and the Barossa – and worth between $3 million and $6 million each.
Allure Properties recently launched their Diamond Fund, which aims to buy at least six luxury properties in London, the south of France, Colorado, Queenstown and Phuket while the dollar is high and real estate prices are low. Allure Properties’ Jo Perrott says “The residences that we have targeted are about 50% discounted on their prices several years ago. We have all the right indicators in place for this to work well.”
“We have had so much interest, particularly from Melbourne, WA and Sydney as well as from management companies, in this approach to shared investment in luxury real estate. Many clients talked about wanting domestic property with a shorter time span. We expect that by March next year we could be ready to close the international fund,”
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, real estate marketing | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 29 November 2011
Spending our days in residential neighbourhoods real estate agents hear a lot about the ‘goings on’ in Brisbane’s inner city streets. And lately the number of gripes between neighbours seems to be on the rise. Arguments over tree roots blocking drains and cracking concrete, bins left in front of fences, leaves blocking gutters, noisy tradespeople and yapping dogs. The state government’s even brought in new legislation from November 1st to help resolve disputes. The new rules around trees and fences might not stop the arguments but they do clear up some of the doubts about responsibility.
We prefer to stay out of these over-the-fence blues but there’s one issue when we do offer an opinion. Surely whatever goes on in someone’s home is their business unless it has a negative impact on their neighbours? So the continued push by some bodies corporate to exclude pets from their buildings seems hard to justify. Noise, smells, mess – definitely a valid concern for other owners. But for example how can a cat in an apartment, that never goes outside or near common property, be of any concern to any neighbour? How does a body corp justify intruding into that resident’s life by preventing the pet living there?
Personally, I hate cats. Selfish, flea-bitten and obstinate things. But the Australian Companion Animal Council says research shows pets are good for an individual’s physical health and mental health. ACAC also found that in the past decade Australia’s dog population has decreased by at least 14% and its cat population has dropped by about 10%. Apartment living has been a big part of this change.
We’ve written before about the options pet-owning apartment dwellers have to challenge their body corp. Surely body corps can put sensible guidelines in place to allow pets but protect other residents from noise and smells?
And those of us who aren’t too keen on the moggies can at least be happy that appealing to a broader number of potential buyers and tenants may just bring a financial reward to all apartment owners.
Please share your thoughts by posting a comment below.
Tags: body corp committee Queensland, body corporate issues Queensland, Neighbourhood Disputes Resolution Act, pets in apartments Brisbane
Posted in trends in Brisbane property | 7 Comments »
Posted by admin on 25 November 2011
Home buyers love a good “forced sale” and we’re often asked if we have any mortgagee sales pending. But we just aren’t seeing that many in Brisbane’s inner-city. And a recent article from researcher Phil Ruthven of Ibisworld might help explain. “In the middle of the year, the nearly 9 million occupied households in Australia were valued at a net worth of $6.3 trillion – an average of $714,320 per household.” That’s a fairly impressive level of net assets and he comments that our average wealth continues to climb.
Brisbane-based property commentator Michael Matusik adds some valuable insight into why we’re not witnessing banks stepping in to sell up property: “Our higher saving rate is well documented, but exactly how it is being achieved doesn’t get much commentary. It is not just a simple case of saving more money. For the most part, Australians are saving more by repaying more than the minimum on their housing loans.”
Matusik never shirks from offering an opinion. “The fact that we are paying off our mortgages faster is often ignored by the doom and gloom merchants who predict a repeat here of what occurred overseas, and continue to preach about the pending mother of all property crashes. Yet, according to AFG, the average new loan-to-value ratio is a comfortable 67% and the latest ABS figures show that house prices fell just 2.2% across the Australian capitals over the last twelve months. Yawn. And yet we keep on reading about mortgage stress and impending doom.”
Bargain hunters might get tired of waiting…
Tags: Brisbane home loans, Brisbane home prices, Ibisworld, Michael Matusik, mortgagee sales Brisbane, selling a house Brisbane, selling an apartment Brisbane
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, trends in Brisbane property | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 9 November 2011
Australian home-owning households are 9 to 13 times wealthier than their rental counterparts, according to new data released by the ABS. With a median net wealth of $737,000 for those who’ve paid off their homes and $487,000 for those still repaying the bank, the numbers dwarf rental households’ median net assets of $55,000.
The ABS National Accounts show the huge disparity, but age and household size don’t explain the gap. The average age of a renter is 41 and those paying off a mortgage are 44. The ABS says the average rental home has 1.8 adult occupants while home owners have just 2.1 adults living under the same roof.
A recent Credit Suisse report says Australians are now amongst the world’s wealthiest, with real assets per adult second only to Norway.
The ABS data also shows the growth in the business of renting an investment property. In 1960 just 2.5% of GDP was earned by renting out a dwelling, but by 2010 this had risen to 8%. Last year $99 billion of rent was paid on just under 2 million Australian homes.
Tags: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Brisbane home buyers, Brisbane tenants, household types
Posted in Brisbane landlords | No Comments »
Posted by admin on 7 November 2011
Home buyers often run in fear that a real estate agent might “make” them pay too much. When all your friends are telling you there’s amazing discounts everywhere it can be daunting making an offer on a place. What if you pay too much? Successful bargain-hunting earns you the ultimate social status in 2011, like a victorious marauder returned with the spoils of war. But what if you liked it so much you paid full price, or bought as the only bidder at the auction? The social shock and horror….
So it’s no surprise we’re seeing more and more fact-searching before buyers submit an offer. Online resources have expanded remarkably over recent years and one site’s now released “Guesstimates”, providing an instant “value” of any house in Australia. Even they call it a “guess” and it follows a model similar to an American tool called a Zestimate. We first wrote about them almost 5 years ago and they’ve since caused plenty of confusion in the Land of the Free (data). Guesstimates do use some science to come up with a price range. But it’s pretty rough – in both directions. One home we sold recently (so it’s not yet recorded in official data) sold for 20% or $100,000 less than the website tells us it’s worth. Must be a lousy agent! Inner-city buyers won’t get much from the tool because apartments don’t seem to appear in their data and nor do houses on community title.
And a tip for apartment buyers relying on online sales data: watch out for lot numbers versus apartment numbers. They’re often different and the official stats report lot numbers only. Announcing the Guesstimate launch their product manager said “To meaningfully price a property for sale, more in-depth information and local knowledge is required – this is where real estate agents and professionals, as local experts, have skill sets that are invaluable.”
So consider this: would a good agent spend their Saturday afternoons standing out the front of a home that’s 20% over the market? Home buyers do need to do their homework and be comfortable with their offered price. But as a wise person once told us, “Don’t let someone else buy the home for a price you were prepared to pay”.
Share that one with your friends.
Tags: Brisbane apartment prices, Brisbane home buyers, Brisbane house prices, Brisbane real estate agents, Brisbane real estate statistics, Guesstimates, Zestimates
Posted in Brisbane's sales market, real estate marketing | No Comments »
Posted by Rob Honeycombe on 31 October 2011
How do you know when the market has bottomed? Only once prices go back up. So today’s announcement from RP Data that Brisbane dwelling prices went up 0.4% in September could be a positive sign for our local market. According to the new stats Brisbane has a median price of $415,000 and RP Data’s Tim Lawless says “Housing market conditions are starting to show some green shoots now.” He says that across the nation’s capitals the September data is the best we’ve seen since February.
Brisbane real estate agents ready to call a start to the next boom might do well to take a close look at the numbers. The September gain in our median dwelling price followed a 0.4% drop in August so year on year we’re still down 6.1%.
No matter how you spin it though you’d have to say this is a good time to buy.
Tags: Brisbane house prices, Brisbane median home prices, Brisbane real estate agents, RP Data, Tim Lawless
Posted in Brisbane's sales market | 1 Comment »
Posted by Rob Honeycombe on 19 October 2011
Many home owners make the move to apartment living to get away from the maintenance of a big garden. We’re often told they love the greenery, but not the weekends of mowing and mulching. So they move into concrete buildings where they’re limited to a couple of pots on their balcony. One new trend in urban architecture could see our inner city buildings include big splashes of greenery in the least likely of places.
Vertical gardens are popping up in design magazines around the world and southern cities have a couple of notable examples already up and running. Attaching more than 4,500 plants to the side wall of a Sydney apartment building the designers at TRIO (pictured)have created a garden that’s 12 storeys high. They say the trend to vertical gardens is just starting but there are lots of benefits. Horticulturalist Phillip Johnson says as well as removing Co2 they attract birds and butterflies to their buildings. “They are also effective for insulating against heat and reducing city noise”.
And they can look great.
One South Brisbane residential tower that’s currently before Council for approval has a vertical garden proposed for its main façade – stretching 5 storeys high. It’s in a fairly urban settings with plenty of concrete around it, so it’d be a welcome addition to the neighbourhood (even if the tower itself won’t be). It’s south-facing so no doubt there’ll need to be careful plant selection and planning for maintenance.
Let’s hope this trend takes hold in Brisbane’s inner city, with designs that ensure these green walls always look as good as the artists’ impressions. Otherwise they’ll be like huge versions of those dead pot plants on balconies!
Tags: Brisbane apartments, selling an apartment Brisbane, vertical gardens
Posted in architecture and renovation, trends in Brisbane property | 2 Comments »
Posted by admin on 17 October 2011
If you’ve noticed more tradies’ trucks in your neighbourhood streets there’s an easy explanation: home renovation is on the up. New ABS stats released today show the value of “alternations and additions to residential building” rose 2.6% in the June quarter. Aussies spent a massive $1.8 billion on major renos like new kitchens, decks and media rooms.
Major alternations in a home are classified as all works over $10,000 although last time we did work on our place that was less than the price of a couple of vanity units and taps…
The Housing Industry Association says renovation works are the source of growth for their industry in 2011. New residential construction dropped 5.3% in the June quarter, the majority of the slump in apartments and other attached buildings.
It’s a regular feature of a quieter sales market. People stop building, move less and renovate like crazy. We last reported on this in December 2006 and no doubt we’ll see it again. In a way it’s great for our streets to see all that housing stock rejuvenated.
Tags: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Brisbane houses, Brisbane inner city residential building, Housing Industry Association
Posted in architecture and renovation, trends in Brisbane property | No Comments »
Like a kid who can’t wait to grow up, inner-Brisbane’s property owners are wishing the days away to the start of a fresh year. The market soothsayers are surprisingly quiet about the prospects for 2012 – and probably because 2011 caught so many of them out. Here’s a quick recap:
