So last week media commentators were talking about a busy holiday season in Australian property – now it appears that all is doom and gloom again. Frankly I wish newspapers would stop treating the whole of Australia as a single property market and making meaningless broad statements which may indeed to be right for some small part of the sector but is probably incorrect for the other 90% of the Australian property sector!
More on Australia Property – Looking at a Quiet Three Months
Albania has been in the news recently, as the latest country wishing to join the European Union. Greece has always had a complex relationship with its neighbour and Greeks were always a little unsure about Albanians, mainly because so little information seeped across the border from the secretive, Communist state. Now, however, many Greeks welcome this move and believe that their neighbours have earned EU membership; without Albanian migrants, the economy of Greece would be in even worse trouble.
More on Albanian Stone Masons, Traditional Greek Stone Houses and the European Union
With the current limited supply of residential and commercial units in Abu Dhabi, Al Reem Island and Al Raha Beach come to ease the pressure between supply and demand.
The property market in Abu Dhabi has been the target of much focus since the global financial crisis hit the news. With Plan Abu Dhabi 2030, the government is keen on building up the emirate as a global financial centre by ushering investment into many of its sectors such as infrastructure, energy, education, and real estate amongst others. The aim is to expand the economy and move away from the dependence on oil revenue.
We are now well into the silly season as far as Australia and New Zealand is concerned. Most kids seems to be out of school and parents are focused on buying, buying, buying. The slightly unusual thing this year there seem to be a fair few people are buying property not just Christmas presents. So what is the property market like in Australia during the Christmas and holiday season?
More on Australian Property: Buying and Selling at Christmas
As the scale of the Greek national debt becomes apparent, the need for money has fuelled an intense debate over Greek property taxes and the battle lines between Church and State have been drawn. The Church is the largest property owner in Greece and the government believes that it has enjoyed tax-exemption for long enough and that it should pay its dues. The Orthodox hierarchy, of course, have dug their feet in the sand and stated that they are simply going to refuse to pay the one off windfall tax.
So the emperor with no clothes in Dubai has finally been seen for what it is. News that Dubai World – who brought you such extravagances as “The World” artificial island not to mention the world’s highest skyscraper – has asked its bankers to give it a 6-month holiday from mortgage repayments. (Note to self – must try this with my mortgage provider!). The Australian stock market reacted on Friday with a rather predictable “crash” of some 3%. However by Monday after noon the ASX200 was back up 2.5% Australian investors having discovered that no major Australian bank was exposed to Dubai’s toxic real estate market. And that the United Emirates (of which Dubai is a member state) have come to the party guaranteeing individual states.
More on Australian Property Investment – Implications of the Dubai World Crises
Following on from Building a Holiday Home in Greece – Financing and Building Plots, you are now aware of the process of finding a suitable place to build your dream home in Greece. With that taken care of, the next stage in the process is Designing and Building a Holiday Home Greece, finding the right people to make sure that the entire process runs smoothly. The main factor to have in the back of your mind is that building projects take longer in Greece: Whilst you can draft a contract, tying builders to timelines, the entire process will take longer than in the UK or Northern Europe.
Australian property is still in short supply and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future. According to the News Limited website on-going issues with larger developers getting financing means that Australia’s rapidly growing population will struggle to be housed for the next few years.
For many people, wishing to live the dream and spend long summers in Greece, renovation and self-building are excellent ways of making your money go further. Unless you are prepared to live in rural areas, some distance away from the sea, buying property can be expensive. For those with less money to spend, building a holiday home in Greece is a great way of stretching out the budget to own the vacation home of your dreams, without having to compromise on location or size.
More on Building a Holiday Home in Greece – Financing and Building Plots
Could the pain in Spain being caused by declining tourist arrivals finally be coming to end? The latest figures just released for the holiday island of Lanzarote by the Spanish airport authority AENA certainly suggest that this may be the case. With the decline in foreign tourist arrivals halving last month and the German market actually recording small but positive growth. Whilst occupancy levels in hotels and apartments in Lanzarote are also showing some signs of improvement.
