Guest Contributors
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Weird and Wonderful
Autumn styling with Justine Wilson
Leading Sydney Property Stylist, Justine Wilson shares her favourite season of the year’s tips and tricks to get on trend in the home this autumn. From colour palettes to texture, patterns and adding some ambience, Justine provides solutions for every room in the home. …
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TECH + SOCIAL
Top 10 real estate social media marketing tips for real estate agents
Social media is the highest lead generator for property businesses. …
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INDUSTRY NEWS
What makes an ideal commercial property for an investor?
The commercial property sector in Australia has shown signs of getting hot after more than a year beset by the COVID pandemic. …
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CONTRIBUTORS
James Nihill: Unlocking rental growth in a post-COVID world
Patrick Leo Property Experts managing director, James Nihill, has shared his insights into maintaining and expanding rental growth in the property management sector, as a greater proportion of tenants choose to renew their lease. …
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TECH + SOCIAL
How to avoid these seven common website mistakes that could be losing you leads
Digital marketing is a vital component in today's market. But as SEO continue to evolve, it can be difficult to keep your website up-to-date …
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CONTRIBUTORS
How the spring selling season is shaping up: Mathew Tiller
LJ Hooker head of research Mathew Tiller has revealed how restrictions will impact Spring selling and what to expect next year. …
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OPINION
Why serial entrepreneur Nick Bell has 10 mentors at the one time (and why you should too)
Five-time AFR Young Rich Lister Nick Bell shares how he reached his goals with the assistance of 10 different mentors …
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BTW
Unity is key to fighting COVID-19 as the property industry takes another hit
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian real estate industry has been in the headlines for record property prices but we too have had to run our own unique course. In March 2020, our workforce of Australian property managers was handed a government policy to implement: rental eviction moratoriums. Property managers in every single jurisdiction did the heavy lifting in working with tenants and investors to single-handedly deliver this policy on behalf of the National Cabinet. …
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NEWS
The lesson for Australia out of Victoria’s property tax hikes: two out of three ain’t bad
Victorian treasurer Tim Pallas’s three-pronged strategy to raise an extra $2.7 billion in property taxes over the next four years is a case of two out of three ain’t bad, writes Brendan Coates. …
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Elite Agent
The home renovation equation: A personal finance expert explains
Home renovation has long been something of a national sport for many Australians, but community demand for home fix-ups has reached fever pitch since the pandemic. …
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NEWS
Would scrapping negative gearing lead to more affordable house prices?
House prices are back in the news, and out of control. In the past three months the median house price in Sydney has risen by more than A$100,000 to A$1.12 million. …
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NEWS
Build-to-rent surge will change apartment living for Australians, but for better or worse?
Australia’s emerging build-to-rent sector is growing — “booming” by some accounts with a 70 per cent jump in value in the past year. …
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Real Estate Content
Why isn’t there a big increase in tiny house living?
Heather Shearer, Research Fellow, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University and Paul Burton, Professor of Urban Management & Planning and Director, Cities Research Institute Griffith University, contributed this article to The Conversation. The original title was Loving the idea of tiny house living, even if you don’t live in one. …
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OPINION
What if Google does pull its search engine out of Australia?
The Australian government’s push to make Google pay news organisations for linking to their content has seen the search giant threaten to pull out of Australia. …
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Elite Agent
The hits and misses for commercial property in 2021
COVID-19 changed the way we do commercial property, potentially forever says to Steve Palise, commercial property expert and author. …
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Elite Agent
Renters in Victoria soon won’t have to deal with dodgy heaters and insulation
Renters will no longer have to contend with poorly insulated homes and Victoria will move closer towards 7-star home efficiency standards under a A$797 million plan announced this week. It’s purportedly the biggest energy efficiency scheme in any Australian state’s history. Energy efficiency essentially means using less energy to perform the same job. It’s… …
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Elite Agent
A third of our waste comes from buildings. This one’s designed for reuse and cuts emissions by 88%
Designing buildings so they can easily be taken apart and the materials reused provides a feasible and commercial pathway for minimising waste and greenhouse gas emissions. …
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OPINION
$1 billion per year (or less) could halve rental housing stress
COVID has shown us what’s possible when it comes to alleviating poverty. For six months JobSeeker payments were doubled and then maintained at a level 50 per cent above normal. When the bonus finishes at year end it is likely to be permanently increased for the first time in almost 30 years. Commonwealth rent assistance could do with the same sort of attention. Rent assistance is at present added on to other payments such as the pension and JobSeeker and is inadequate, …
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OPINION
The suburbs are the future of post-COVID retail
The COVID-19 pandemic delivered a body blow to CBD retailers, but it’s just the latest of their challenges in recent years. …
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Elite Agent
Healthy housing agenda needed
The World Health Organisation has always been interested in housing as one of the big “causes of the causes”, of the social determinants, of health. The WHO launched evidence-based guidelines for healthy housing policies in 2019. Australia is behind the eight ball on healthy housing. Other governments, including in the United States, United Kingdom and New… …
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NEWS
Why more housing stimulus will be needed to sustain recovery
In response to the COVID-19 recession, federal, state and territory governments quickly provided support to the housing industry for two reasons. First, to safeguard jobs and, second, because investment in the housing and construction industries has a high economic multiplier effect. However, new research released today shows further housing stimulus measures will be essential to help drive an economic recovery into 2021 and beyond. …
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Elite Agent
The social science behind auctions
More than ever before, auctions shape the economy. Sites such as eBay have made them an everyday transaction. The placement of every Google ad is priced by an instantaneous mini-auction. Governments use them to allocate radio spectrum and to run emissions trading schemes. The 2020 Nobel Prize in economics has been awarded to two Americans, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, for their work in analysing auctions and how to make them more efficient. …
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Elite Agent
Am I coping well during the pandemic?
The pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges. Many of us have lost work, gained carer responsibilities and grappled with social isolation. Experts have warned of a looming wave of mental illness as a result. …
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Elite Agent
Why do some people struggle to make ‘healthy’ decisions, day after day?
To navigate our way through the world, we constantly make choices. While we’ve all made our fair share of regrettable ones, most of us eventually learn from these – and we generally take this ability for granted. …
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OPINION
COVID impacts demand a change of plan: from commuting to living locally
Long-term planning has delivered mass transit systems to cater for high-patronage, hub-and-spoke transport systems. Unfortunately, this has left many city residents without basic access to public transport services. And we could never have planned for the impacts of COVID-19. Our previous plans were based on the best available data at the time. Today, these plans must be critically reviewed using new data that properly represent the world and our transport needs as they are now. …
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Elite Agent
Cutting JobSeeker payments will cause crippling rental stress in our cities
As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic caused businesses to shut down, state governments acted to avoid evictions by introducing moratoriums, and the federal government introduced the Coronavirus Supplement of A$550 on top of the fortnightly JobSeeker payment. These measures were intended to enable 1.6 million Australians to ride out the pandemic-related business shutdowns. This welcome… …
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Elite Agent
It’s about to become easier to lend irresponsibly, to help the recovery
What used to be known as a requirement to lend responsibly is now regarded as red tape. …
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NEWS
Scott Morrison names six priority areas in $1.5 billion plan to boost manufacturing
The federal government is selecting six priority areas for support in a $1.5 billion manufacturing plan Scott Morrison will outline in a pre-budget address. They are resources technology and critical minerals processing, food and beverage, medical products, recycling and clean energy, defence, and space. The plan will also focus on… …
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NEWS
Common COVID-19 cleaning mistakes in the workplace
Lisa Macqueen reveals the eight common health and safety mistakes that workplaces are making on their premises …
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Elite Agent
Economics academics say the Reserve Bank should do more
Former prime minister Paul Keating isn’t alone in wanting the Reserve Bank to do much more to ensure economic recovery. …
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Elite Agent
The easing of regional Victoria’s restrictions signals hope for Melbourne too
Regional Victoria will take the third step out of COVID-19 restrictions. …
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Elite Agent
Why COVID-19 might not change our cities as much as we expect
What will be the normal way of urban living when the COVID-19 crisis passes? What aspects will remain with us and what will disappear? The coronavirus pandemic has thrust us into a moment of rapid change. Like all change, it is difficult to predict. But lessons from history provide us with two important insights. First, temporary change sometimes has remarkably little lasting effect. …
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Elite Agent
Ultraviolet light can make indoor spaces safer during the pandemic – if it’s used the right way
Ultraviolet light has a long history as a disinfectant and the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, is readily rendered harmless by UV light. The question is how best to harness UV light to fight the spread of the virus and protect human health as people work, study, and shop indoors. The virus spreads in several ways. The main route of transmission is through person-to-person contact via aerosols and droplets emitted when an infected person breathes, …
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OPINION
After COVID, we’ll need a rethink to repair Australia’s housing system and the economy
A new report from the New South Wales Productivity Commission (NSWPC) announces that “[higher] housing costs […] impose broader economic costs”. That chimes with our own newly published research. The implication is that Australia’s heavily capitalised housing market will weigh down economic recovery from the shocks of the coronavirus pandemic. A niche group of economists and epidemiologists had warned the world for decades that a pandemic would have devastating economic and social consequences. …
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Elite Agent
Have we just stumbled on the biggest productivity increase of the century?
One of the most striking responses to the COVID-19 pandemic has been the sudden shift of around half the workforce to working at home. In many cases, this was combined with an equally sudden shift to home schooling. Contrary to what might have been expected, working from home was one part of the pandemic response that went remarkably smoothly. Most kinds of office work continued almost as if nothing had changed. …
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