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
On an annual basis every Australian property investor should sit down and review their property portfolio. Many people will do this around the end of the tax year – but I prefer to do it over the Christmas / New Year holiday’s when I have more time and also time to make any property investment changes and have them reflect in the current year’s tax return.
AFL’s grand final is only weeks away – and that markets the traditional Spring selling season in Victoria and the rest of Australia. The spring buyer are out in force in the Melbourne property market – but is this the sign of better things to come in the Australian property market – or just another false dawn?
More on Property Investment in Australia – How’s the Market?
The property investing scene in Australia is a bit of mess – as usual the real estate agents would tell you, without a moments hesitation, that now is the time to invest! The stock market specialists, on the other hand, would say that property is still way over-valued.
More on Property Investing in Australia – Is 2010 the Year to Invest?
When looking at property that you intend to rent out, Australian property investors really should take a long hard look at the chattels and gadgets included in the property – some of them are just too much trouble to be bothered with. Here’s some of my least favourite household chattels:
Easter and other long weekends can often be a good time to be out looking at property- because most people won’t be, instead at home with the kids or on holdiay. It can be a great time to grab a bargain for the switched on investor.
Macquarie Groupis probably one of Australia’s best known of Australia’s commercial banks. Now it might also be the first financial group to be bailed out by the Federal government’s guarantee to commercial property investors.
Over $25 million worth of property was sold by Colliers International at a large Sydney auction recently. Many of the buyers appeared to be private investors looking for a safer haven for their retirement savings than the fickle stock market or abysmally low money market rates.
Well here’s a surprise – the demand for simple beach homes is higher than for over-priced, over-specified, over-designed apartments at the beach.
I don’t mean beautiful, organic, environmentally perfect, sustainable designer homes. Nope this is about the humble beach shack – the simple, small fibro house on bigger a section near the beach. The typical Aussie shack would probably have a larger garage than the rest of the houses footprint. Two bedrooms are the norm, three the exception. There is no marble, no spa bath- and the wooden floors are more rustic than highly polished.
We previously talked about the problems of Hoptoun, where the collapse of BHP Billiton’s Ravensthorpe $2.2 billion nickle mine, saw the local property market in tatters.
One local developer moved fast to slash section prices in Hoptoun from an outrageous $260k to a much more realistic $69,000. Hoptoun, although located on Western Australia’s beautiful southern coast, now has limited to zero jobs options for people moving into town. Realistically most people buying into Hoptoun are either retirees or holiday home buyers. It does seem to be mainly these buyers who have bought twenty-eight of the 30 blocks in the Steeredale Meadosws estate in the past month with prices from $69,000 to $90,000. Those prices are for 4ha sections with all services connected.
