Real Estate News
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Aussie tenants to share solar power in world-first trial
The Salvation Army is involved in a revolutionary trial in which excess power from rooftop solar panels will be shared and traded amongst numerous tenants living in the same building. Melbourne based start-up Allume Energy developed the SolShare platform, which allows power from one single panel to be metered out to different residents. Previously such projects have stalled due to…
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Sydney’s top office towers to tumble in value
Sydney’s most expensive office towers are expected to fall in value by as much as 30 per cent, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs. The drop in values will be due to both the impact of the pandemic on the economy, and a “cyclical downturn” already well under way before COVID-19. “The first six months of the 2020…
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Auction volume increases, but Victorian withdrawals weigh down results
Continuing lockdowns in Melbourne again saw a high volume of properties withdrawn from auction this week, weighing down the national preliminary clearance rate, which came in at 59.2 per cent. This week’s preliminary figure was the same as last week, but came off the back of higher volume. CoreLogic reported 1344 capital city homes were taken to auction this week.…
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Regional house prices rise despite pandemic
While home prices in every capital city aside from Hobart and Canberra fell during the last quarter due to the continuing COVID-19 crisis, homes are rising in value across much of regional Australia. The latest Domain House Price Report shows that ‘median dwelling values’, a combination of houses and units, rose over the last quarter, albeit by 0.1 per cent.…
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NZ realtor offers no-commission sales
Mackenzie's Real Estate in Wellington are making the leap from commercial real estate into residential, and frankly, it couldn't have happened at a worse time. But owner Euan Mackenzie is hoping that a zero-commission offer…
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Victorian homes selling faster now than 12 months ago
While all the news from Victoria at the moment seems to fall firmly into the ‘doom and gloom’ category, new data from the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV) paints a sunnier picture. REIV President Leah Calnan says that, despite the pandemic, residential property across the state is selling faster now than 12 months prior. The average home in Victoria…
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Auction clearance rates keep falling in Melbourne
Towards the end of June and the start of July, clearance rates in Melbourne sat in the low 60 per cent range. By the week ending July 12, it sat at 51.2 per cent. The following week, the final clearance rate was 43.8 per cent. Not surprisingly, the Melbourne clearance rate during this second wave is similar to that of…
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AFG teams with 86 400: Australia’s only digital mortgage offering
86 400, the first bank in Australia built for smartphones, has signed a partnership with Australian Finance Group Ltd (AFG), expanding its broker distribution network. AFG is one Australia’s largest aggregators, with over 3000 brokers, and a loan book exceeding $140 billion. 86 400 enables electronic signatures, digital ID verification, collection of expense and income information, plus is the only…
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Canberra tenants given a break on break fees
Changes made to Canberra’s Residential Tenancies Act this week mean that residential tenants who have been financially impacted by the pandemic will not have to pay the usual ‘break fees’ for terminating a fixed-term lease. In addition, tenants across the territory can now give three weeks notice when breaking a fixed-term lease without needing to file an official application through…
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Home loan rates offered for under 2%
Loans.com.au are making a big play, offering introductory home loan rates of 1.99 per cent, which are touted as the lowest variable rate in Australia. They are also offering a two-year discounted variable rate of 2.09 per cent. These rates are available to “new customers who apply for an owner-occupier loan paying principal and interest repayments” with a 20 per…
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Mixed results for Q2: all unit prices fall, houses rise in select capitals
Results are in for the second quarter of the year and, according to Domain, all major capital cities saw unit prices fall across the June quarter, with house prices rising in Adelaide, Canberra, and Hobart. It appears the…
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RBA declare pandemic downturn worst since the Great Depression
The Reserve Bank of Australia is optimistic about the future of the economy, despite conceding the pandemic downturn was the “worst contraction since the Great Depression”. “Consumer spending in May and June had been stronger than expected and had also held up better than in most other countries,” the RBA said, in minutes released from the monthly monetary policy meeting.…
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REIQ survey finds only 6% of renters qualified as “COVID-19 impacted”
A recent survey conducted by REIQ shows how Queensland propety managers have gone above and beyond when it comes to rent negotiations, often acting outside the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation (COVID-19 Emergency Response) Regulation 2020. A survey of over 1200 REIQ property management agencies revealed that only 6.05 per cent of rental tenants in the residential sphere qualified as…
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Mall in Melbourne CBD to sell for half its 2016 price
In 2016, it was billed as “Melbourne’s newest premier fashion destination”, a re-branded inner-city mall that had just undergone a major $30m facelift, but now St Collins Lane is being sold for less than half of what JP Morgan paid for it just four years earlier. The Australian Financial Review reports that a “local fund manager backed by offshore capital”…
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Jon Bon Jovi flips $20m mansion, buys $43m estate a few blocks away
After a four-decade career, 130 million album sales, and tours to over 34 million people worldwide, it’s safe to say that Jon Bon Jovi isn’t living on a prayer anymore. He is also quite the house flipper. In one single day last week, he sold a Palm Beach pad he and his wife had renovated only a few months ago…
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Commercial real estate investment down 32% in Asia Pacific
JLL have delivered some not-so-surprising news: Commercial real estate investment across Asia Pacific fell by 32 per cent in the first half of 2020. Investments were down 26 per cent during the first quarter, rising to 39 per cent in the second quarter, as travel bans, economic hardship, and lockdowns impacted the real estate market. Singapore was the hardest hit…
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Eview Group partners with RiTA to expand on their tech stack
In line with Eview Group’s innovative edge and tech-driven strategies, the brand has partnered exclusively with RiTA, as they look to expand their eco-system of technology. Welcoming an artificial intelligence arm of their digital portfolio, Eview Group said it would cement their position as an industry-leading agency when it comes to innovation implementation. After months of detailed analysis and investigation…
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Shopping mall windfall kicks against COVID trends
Two Sydney shopping centres have been bundled up and sold for $91.5 million, a price in step with valuations made in a pre-COVID market. This is despite shopping mall vacancies hitting a 20-year high in May. The Pemulwuy Marketplace and West Ryde Marketplace were taken to market by the Charter Hall Retail Partnership No.1 Trust. “Both centres represented an opportunity…
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JobKeeper extension applauded as “right move”
The Property Council and Master Builders Australia are among the many industries to applaud the government’s extension of the JobKeeper program. “Today’s announcement by the Prime Minister and Treasurer provides businesses and their employees with the certainty they need for the coming months as we continue to grapple with the public health and economic impact of COVID-19,” said Ken Morrison,…
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Pets, provisions, periodic leases: the proposed changes to WA Residential Tenancies Act
Ahead of an upcoming review of the WA Residential Tenancies Act, REIWA has released a list of policy options they hope will “help reinvigorate the rental market”. While they state that few aspects of the current rental legislation require “a complete overhaul” and that it is “generally working well,” they have outlined the below seven key policy options: Maintain the…
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Finalists announced for Openn Negotiation Excellence Awards
Online real estate sales platform, Openn Negotiation, has announced the finalists for their upcoming virtual awards night on the 6th of August. This year marks the tech platform’s third annual awards night and first virtual…
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JobSeeker cuts likely to cause real estate crisis
The removal of the current JobSeeker supplement will result in 242,000 renters and 246,000 mortgage holders suddenly living in poverty. Those are some of the grim findings from The Australia Institute’s new report, which tips that Thursday’s announcement could place untenable pressure on the housing market. The report, led by TAI’s senior economist Matt Grudnoff, estimates 650,000 Australians, including 120,000…
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Key-free locks are the new real estate must-have
Earlier this month, we wrote about the first office block in Australia to incorporate completely hands-free entry. While the developers on that high-rise had the somewhat prescient technology in the pipeline well before COVID-19 caused us all to think differently about public space, a start-up in Los Angeles is finding their hands-free offering is suddenly a hot commodity. Openpath just…
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Return to print is a sign of confidence in the real estate sector
News Corp Australia will resume printing of three community papers in lucrative Sydney real estate markets this week. The Wentworth Courier, The Mosman Daily and North Shore Times will return. Not coincidentally, these papers were among the few community print titles to be spared from News Corp recent cull, where 76 papers moved to digital-only. These three papers reach 85…
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Environmental reform for building codes “sensible and long overdue”
Reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that aim to streamline regulatory legislation for both housing and commercial property projects have been welcomed by The Property Council of Australia as “sensible and long overdue.” “There has never been a more critical time to ensure that our regulatory regime is free of unnecessary process and strikes the right balance…
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Why COVID-19 might not change our cities as much as we expect
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. Second, what looks like a lasting effect is often the acceleration of existing trends, rather than new, crisis-caused trends. COVID-19 impacts…
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‘Adjusted’ clearance rate paints an interesting picture
Withdrawn properties in Victoria continued to weight down the clearance rate this week, but as CoreLogic and others reflect, it’s important to keep things in perspective. This week 1167 properties went to auction across the…
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JobKeeper extension likely, but it will come with conditions
An extension of the JobKeeper scheme looks increasingly likely, with Finance Minister Mathias Cormann foreshadowing the likelihood of continued conditional support and the unions welcoming the prospect of further assistance. According to the ABC, details…
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REIV says Victorian property market holding firm
REIV President Leah Calnan says the Victorian property market has displayed true strength in holding firm against all predictions regarding the impact of Covid-19. The latest Quarterly median prices released by the Real Estate Institute…
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Crown looking to build billion dollar retail portfolio
Since launching in Sydney in 1996, Crown Group has built a $5 billion development pipeline across Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Los Angeles, that includes residential communities, luxury apartments, hotels, a fund management platform, and shopping centres. It’s the latter of those interests they are looking to further develop, announcing a long-term plan to develop a $1 billion portfolio of retail…
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The best suburbs for auctions
CoreLogic’s recent auction data for the June quarter showed that both the number of auctions and the clearance rate dropped significantly. But certain suburbs performed much better than others. In Sydney, the highest performing suburb was Cremorne, with 23 of 30 properties under the hammer selling, a 76.7 per cent clearance rate. Other hot areas in Sydney included Leichhardt with…
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Fine print may dash numerous HomeBuilder hopes
Australians with plans to pull their super and use it as part of a deposit for a HomeBuilder claim may run into some pesky fine print that sets their plans back considerably. Real Estate Buyers Agents Association (REBAA) president Cate Bakos warns of a little-known rule that banks are beholden to when lending money: a rule that may completely throw…
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$116m land package to benefit regional WA
A new package aimed at stimulating real estate investment in regional Western Australia will be rolled out over the next few weeks. The McGowan government announced the $116 million Regional Land Booster package with the goal of “boosting the economy, creating regional jobs and assisting regional businesses to recover from the impacts of COVID-19”. “The Regional Land Booster package will…
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Confidence within the property industry is on the rise
The easing of COVID restrictions over the last few months has resulted in a surge of confidence in the property industry since April. The latest ANZ/Property Council survey took place between June 15 and July 1, surveying 955 industry folk. Not surprisingly, the states and territories with the biggest shift in sentiment were those least impacted by COVID-19: South Australia,…
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New homes under construction dipped well before COVID-19
New research from HIA shows that the low numbers of new houses under construction was a major issue well before the fiscal and physical pressures associated with COVID-19. At the end of March, as the first restrictions started to come into play, there were around 188,000 new homes under construction. This was the lowest number since 2015. While the figures…
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