Market Update
Park Place: Britain’s most expensive home sold for record £140m
The buyer, who has not been identified, has snapped up the 300 year-old Grade II-listed property, in the village of Remenham, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxon.
The record sale also reportedly includes about 200 acres of the parklands, listed monuments, house, cottages, stables and a boat house.
The £140m sale price makes it Britain’s most expensive house, eclipsing the £136m sale at One Hyde Park, Knightsbridge, central London, earlier this year.
Experts said the sale showed that the top end property market was still buoyant despite the global economic crisis.
Park Place, which has 30,000 square feet of living space and is set in 570 acres, was bought for £42m in 2007 by Mike Spink, a developer who specialises in upmarket properties.
At the time it was the most expensive house bought outside London.
The developer has spent several million pounds undertaking extensive renovations of the property, which had a decaying exterior and was run down. He is also developing a second 300-acre phase of the estate, which is not part of the sale,
The property, which backs on to the Thames river, was put on the market in 2006 for £45 million after plans to turn it into a luxury country club were rejected by Wokingham borough council following a vociferous campaign by residents.
The main house dates from the early 18th century and was once owned by Frederick, Prince of Wales and eldest son of George II, and was substantially rebuilt in the late 1800s.
Rooms still have the original huge stone fireplaces and stained glass windows. The ghost of Mary Blandy, who was accused of poisoning her father in 1752, is said to haunt the grounds.
The original sale involved several outlying properties, including three houses, 10 tenanted cottages and a further eight in need of renovation.
The property, which was used until 1998 as a boarding school, has two golf courses, a boathouse on the Thames and a stable block. It was recently used in the remake of the film St. Trinians.
Earlier this month, Knight Frank, the estate agents, which has advised on the Park Place sale, published research that concluded that a “notable change is the beginning of international interest” from buyers, especially from Eastern Europeans.
“Our experience is that the ripple effect from London is just beginning to reach the Home Counties where, after a slow start to the year, sales activity is rising,” said Rupert Sweeting, Knight Frank’s Head of Country House Sales.
“Generally, the market is still particularly price sensitive: if the price is right, a house will sell within six weeks of coming to the market.”
Mr Spink declined to comment to the Financial Times. Both Knight Frank and Savills, which also advised on the sale, declined to comment.
Source : The Telegraph London 17 August 2011
Auction rates offer glimmer of hope for housing market
LAST week’s rollercoaster ride on the Australian stockmarket did not dampen the weekend’s house-buying activity in Sydney.
The city’s auction clearance rate was 60.5 per cent compared with 54.3 per cent last weekend and 64.2 per cent for the same weekend last year. There were 299 properties offered for auction compared with 261 last weekend and 372 on the same weekend last year.
Of the 214 reported auctions, 144 properties were sold for a total value of $116.4 million at an average value of $808,333. The median price of houses sold was $855,000 and for units it was $685,000.
The most expensive property sold was a five-bedroom house in Strathfield that fetched $2.37 million. The cheapest was a two-bedroom unit in Wiley Park that sold for $227,000.
There are indications that Sydney’s housing market is still subdued but stable, with just a hint of growing confidence.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics says the number of owner-occupied home loans taken out in June in NSW fell by 4.6 per cent on May. While the monthly number was down, the result was nonetheless encouraging considering that the number of home loans rose by 19 per cent in May, giving a net rise of 15 per cent for the two months.
More encouraging was the number of home loans taken out in the June quarter: 8.3 per cent – more than the same period last year.
The average value of home loans rose to $325,300 in June – the highest monthly figure on record.
Although the Sydney market remains quiet, there is optimism that activity will increase for the rest of the year. The number of properties on the market is higher than for the same time last year but the rate of growth of new listings is falling.
Although there are still some doubts about the performance of local, national and international economies, last week’s sharemarket rally indicates there is investor confidence in the underlying strength of the Australian economy.
If this confidence holds up, as expected, this is unambiguous good news for the stability of housing markets.
Source : Sydney Morning Herald on 15 August 2011 by Dr Andrew Wilson
Sharemarket crisis raises hopes for real estate
LAST week’s sharemarket crisis will spark a rush of local investment in the Australian real estate sector as people seek stability in bricks and mortar, experts say.
Christopher Joye, founder and managing director of research and investment group Rismark International, said property would be the third most popular investment after cash and bank deposits.
“We know that during large equity market corrections, residential property has proved to be a relatively resilient investment class, and that was the case during 1987, during the 1981 recession, during the 2001 tech-wreck and again during the 2007-08 GFC,” Mr Joye said.
“The Australian sharemarket fell 50 per cent in 2007-08, but Australian house prices only fell by 3.8 per cent, so as a store of wealth it has certainly proved to be a safer place to be.
“There is also that visceral attraction to something as tangible as bricks and mortar, that also doesn’t seem to be buffeted by global market ructions in the same way as far less tangible shares are.”
Real Estate Institute of Australia president Pamela Bennett said it was still a buyers’ market, with good stock to choose from.
Moody’s senior economist Matt Robinson was nervous about how last week’s market tumble would affect the auction of his four-bedroom terrace house in Surry Hills, in Sydney’s inner-city, on Saturday.
So he was “extremely happy” when the Bourke Street property, which he bought for $1.7 million in 2009, went under the hammer for $2.01m, making it the most expensive property to be sold at auction in Sydney over the weekend.
“It was difficult circumstances with all the market ructions that occurred in the latter part of last week, so I guess we were lucky we had a good product,” Mr Robinson said.
Across Sydney, auction clearance rates remained firm at 56.2 per cent over the weekend, up from 53 per cent on the previous week’s figures, according to Australian Property Monitors.
Melbourne’s clearance rate also rose slightly, from 57.2 per cent last week to 58.1 per cent over the weekend.
Agent for the Bourke Street property, David Servi from First National Real Estate Spencer and Servi, said inner-city housing was a strong and reliable long-term investment.
“Property in the inner city is in a fairly safe position because people want and need housing close to the city and there is a shortage of it,” Mr Servi said.
Source : Jodie Minus, The Australian Newspaper. 8 August 2011
RBA interest rates decision – 2 August 2011
Statement by Glenn Stevens, Governor: Monetary Policy Decision
At its meeting today, the Board decided to leave the cash rate unchanged at 4.75 per cent.
The global economy is continuing its expansion, but the pace of growth slowed in the June quarter. The supply-chain disruptions from the Japanese earthquake and the dampening effects of high commodity prices on income and spending in major countries both contributed to the slowing. It is still not clear how persistent this slower growth will be. The supply-chain disruptions are now gradually abating and commodity prices have softened of late, though they generally remain high. In China most indications suggest only a mild slowdown so far.
The central scenario for the world economy over the next couple of years envisaged by most forecasters remains one of growth below the pace of 2010, but at or above long-term averages. Downside risks have increased, however, as concerns have grown over the outlook for the public finances of both Europe and the United States.
Australia’s terms of trade are now at very high levels and national income has been growing strongly. Investment in the resources sector is picking up very strongly and some related service sectors are enjoying better than average conditions. But in other sectors, cautious behaviour by households and the high level of the exchange rate are having a noticeable dampening effect. The impetus from earlier Australian Government spending programs is now also abating, as had been intended.
The resumption of coal production continues, but a full recovery of flood-affected production now looks unlikely before early next year. Precautionary behaviour by households also looks likely to keep some areas of demand weaker in the near term than earlier expected. Overall, growth in real GDP through 2011 is now likely to be at about trend. Over the medium term, overall growth is still likely to be at trend or higher, unless the world economy deteriorates noticeably.
Growth in employment has moderated and the unemployment rate has been little changed, near 5 per cent, for some time now. Reports of skills shortages remain confined, at this point, to the resources and related sectors. After the significant decline in 2009, growth in wages has returned to rates seen prior to the downturn, though productivity growth remains weak.
Year-ended CPI inflation has been high, affected by the extreme weather events earlier in the year. As these effects reverse over the next couple of quarters, CPI inflation should decline. But measures that give a better indication of the trend in inflation have begun to rise over the past six months, after declining for the previous two years. While they have, to date, remained consistent with the 2–3 per cent target on a year-ended basis, the Board remains concerned about the medium-term outlook for inflation.
It is appropriate under such circumstances for monetary policy to exert a degree of restraint. Most financial indicators suggest that it has been doing so, as a result of the Board’s decisions last year. Credit growth has declined over recent months and is very subdued by historical standards, even with evidence of greater willingness to lend. Most asset prices, including housing prices, have also softened over recent months. The exchange rate is high. Each of these variables is affected by other factors as well, but together they point to financial conditions being tighter than normal.
At today’s meeting, the Board considered whether the recent information warranted further policy tightening. On balance, the Board judged that it was prudent to maintain the current setting of monetary policy, particularly in view of the acute sense of uncertainty in global financial markets over recent weeks. In future meetings, the Board will continue to assess carefully the evolving outlook for growth and inflation.
Source : Reserve Bank of Australia website
New tenants face higher rents
Demand for rental properties remains high in inner city suburbs across Australia, a real estate group says.
The Sydney suburbs of Glebe, Randwick, and Potts Point all recorded rent rises of at least 11 per cent for new tenants, compared with this time last year, RUN Property says.
Average weekly rent across the city was $534, with properties under $600 in Darlinghurst, in the inner city, “renting like hot cakes” Run Property CEO Rob Farmer said in a statement on Sunday.
The highest performing suburb in Australia was Sydney’s Neutral Bay, where rents for new tenancies jumped by more than 12 per cent, compared with this time last year.
“Many tenants were “staying put” because research continued to show that rent increases are greatest when tenants move out and the property is advertised for lease, Mr Farmer said.
In Melbourne, the suburbs of Armadale, Glen Iris and Kew were star performers, where rents increased by at least 10 per cent, followed by Fitzroy, Essendon, Fairfield, Brunswick and Moonee Ponds, which recorded rent rises of nine per cent or more.
In Brisbane, Nundah recorded the greatest rent increase of 5.9 per cent, followed by Clayfield, St Lucia and Logan Central, which all had increases of at least five per cent.
The figures only relate to new tenancies.
Source : AAP, Sydney Morning Herald 31 July 2011
New $800 ‘green tax’ mooted on homes – you must pay before you can sell
EMBATTLED NSW homeowners could be slugged more than $800 to give their houses a compulsory “green rating” before they are sold or leased, under a new federal government scheme.
Mandatory “green ratings” for apartments and houses similar to those on new washing machines and fridges are to be introduced in the initiative to encourage more energy efficient homes.
The ratings are part of the requirement for each state to introduce legislation requiring homeowners to disclose their home’s energy, greenhouse and water efficiency when they advertise it for sale or lease.
A national report has posed four different options for energy audits which in NSW would range in price from about $200 to $820.
Public consultations on compulsory testing will be held for the first time around the country starting in Sydney on Tuesday.
The most expensive option detailed in the report estimates a charge to an individual home owner of $774 for an assessor with an added $50 cost for the inconvenience of having to arrange to be present during the assessment.
But homeowners would not benefit from this option, which is estimated to cost homeowners a total of $1.9 billion, Real Estate Institute of NSW president Wayne Stewart said.
“We agree there needs to be a change of thought and attitude towards energy efficiency,” Mr Stewart said.
“But the government needs to work with consumers to bring about change rather than slap them with what looks like being another tax of up to $800.”
A less expensive option involves a simpler thermal assessment, involving a cost of $172.50 for an assessor and a $25 cost to a householder.
The third model would be an online version of the thermal performance assessment at a cost of $68 if done by the householder or $165 if done by an assessor with an associated $18 “householder waiting cost”.
The fourth option is similar to that already adopted in Queensland whereby a homeowner fills out a checklist of building information.
This option is estimated to cost $41 if done by the property owner and $150 if done by an assessor.
Mandatory energy ratings were being introduced to establish a credible and uniform system, a spokesperson for Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency said.
Rating a property’s green performance could also boost its value.
“Assessing the energy and water efficiency characteristics of a home can help people chose a property that is potentially more comfortable and cheaper to run,” the spokesperson said.
Souce : BRONWEN GORA REAL ESTATE WRITER From The Sunday Telegraph 31 July 2011
A beacon amid the property gloom
If you think times are tough here for the property market, consider what’s happening elsewhere.
Winter is normally a gloomy time in real estate but this winter is more dour than most in the nation’s capital city house markets. Agents report that buyers are thin on the ground and the ones that are around are cautious. And factors that would normally give the market a kick along – a buoyant economy, low unemployment and comparatively low interest rates – don’t seem to be helping much.
”We’re finding it a lot more challenging than it was at the same time last year, or for the whole calendar year last year,” a director and auctioneer at Cooley Auctions in Sydney, Damien Cooley, says.
At the moment consumer confidence is low and it seems people would rather pay off their debts than add to them, says a senior research analyst at RP Data, Cameron Kusher. ”If people aren’t willing to pay a few hundred dollars in a shop, their propensity to spend $600,000 to buy a home is lessened as well,” he says.
Yet if you think the property market’s a bit flat in Sydney, console yourself with the following. This city is in far better shape than anywhere else in the country.
The latest data from the Fairfax-owned Australian Property Monitors – released this week (and used throughout this story) – shows the median house price for Sydney is $644,658 – up just 0.1 per cent in the June quarter.
It’s a less rosy picture during the past 12 months in which Sydney prices have struggled to grow at all and are actually down slightly – 0.2 per cent – from June last year.
But it’s a much better result when compared with the much larger price falls that occurred in every other capital except Darwin during the same 12-month period. And in the three months to June 30, Melbourne and Hobart recorded no growth, while the rest sank into the red. Interestingly, while the APM statistics showed that Canberra’s median house price fell in the quarter, it had been growing at a relatively healthy 1.8 per cent for the previous three months.
In Sydney, auction clearance rates have also been weaker compared with last year but, APM’s senior economist, Andrew Wilson, says, at least they’re showing signs of improving.
”Certainly Sydney’s got the best prospects of anywhere to move upwards,” Wilson says.
One reason Sydney’s property market is holding up better than most is that the city hasn’t experienced the explosion in house prices in other cities, where prices got too far ahead of people’s ability to afford them, Kusher says.
In the past decade average values have increased less than 5 per cent a year in Sydney, well under the national average, he says.
Things have been far gloomier in Melbourne, for example, which had extraordinary growth of 22 per cent in house prices in the 12 months until June last year.
Another reason for Sydney’s buoyant market is the chronic shortage of houses and fast-rising rents. ”It’s highly competitive whether it’s buying or renting in Sydney’s inner city, which means fundamentally that Sydney house-price growth will continue,” Wilson says.
The city has a two-speed housing market that is driven mainly by affordability – quiet at the top but moving in the centre and the bottom, especially in the inner and middle western suburbs, the north-west and parts of the south, he says.
Cooley says while the overall market in Sydney is ”challenging”, there are ”deals out there taking place and there are properties that are selling pretty well”. His company’s strongest region for auctions in June was the inner west, where the clearance rate was a bullish 20 percentage points higher than the rest of Sydney, at 75 per cent. ”It was no surprise, it’s been the strongest market for quite some time,” he says.
An inner-west agent, Paul Pettenon, the principal of Raine and Horne Concord, says house prices in his area stretching from Canada Bay to Rhodes are still fairly strong, although buyers have been more reluctant to spend as freely as they did in the past year. ”Pricing properties now is very important,” he says. ”Buyers are a bit more savvy and aware of the market conditions. They know what they want.”
Melbourne
Median: $554,610
Quarter: EVEN
Year: DOWN 2.1 per cent
Melbourne’s levelling off of prices reflects ”buyer confidence holding up despite extraordinary prices growth through 2009 and 2010”, Wilson says.
What sets Melbourne apart from the rest of the country is that thousands of houses and apartments are still being built. Kusher believes this could put a lid on price growth, while Wilson expects prices will move sideways ”for a while” as a result. But the strong Victorian economy, coupled with the fact homes in the $1 million to $1.5 million bracket are still good value compared with those in Sydney, eventually will lead to more demand for ”the middle and upper band which might drag prices up”, Wilson says.
The chief executive of RUN Property, Rob Farmer, says there is still plenty of interest in houses that are ”priced correctly”, especially in the inner suburbs of Essendon, Ascot Vale, Kensington, North Melbourne and Brunswick. The shortage of competition from buyers at some sales should encourage more into the market.
Canberra
Median house price: $551,065
Quarterly change: DOWN 2.8 per cent
Year-on-year change: DOWN 2.6 per cent
RP Data describes Canberra as Australia’s best performer in the April quarter. Its citizens are paid well and there’s been low unemployment over the past few years. But APM’s latest data shows price drops. Wilson says the reason is that the city’s economy is starting to soften, especially unemployment which is starting to creep up, and this is affecting prices.
Others see a two-speed market in Canberra. Cory McPherson, the director of Ray White Kingston, says the public service and the ancillary jobs that support it is drawing people from other parts of Australia, to the extent that almost at ”every auction we’ll have someone bidding from interstate or overseas”.
The mid- and lower-priced areas where most public servants typically live are doing better than the top, he says, which has not recovered from the financial crisis in 2008. ”There’s quite a bit of overpricing at the upper end of the market … [but] what we’re finding is there’s a lot of turnover in the outer suburbs. Prices have come back a bit but supply and demand means it’s always fairly competitive.”
Brisbane
Median: $446,778
Quarter: DOWN 1.3 per cent
Year: DOWN 4.9 per cent
Flooding at the beginning of the year is one reason the housing market in Brisbane is one of the worst in the country but it’s not the main one. Like Melbourne, Brisbane had a strong growth in values, especially in 2007 when house prices rose 27 per cent and ”overshot the mark a bit”, Kusher says.
Another traditional engine of the Brisbane property market, migration from other states, has also been noticeably absent since the financial crisis, he says.
Other factors haven’t helped either, such as the high Australian dollar which, according to Wilson, has battered the Queensland economy, particularly its tourism sector. But he predicts the market should start to pick up in the next six months. ”Improved economic performance and reconstruction activities should see the market bottoming out by year’s end,” he says.
Farmer agrees. He thinks the worst is over and buyers, especially first-timers, who are being lured by government incentives, will return in greater numbers. ”On the property clock, we’ve gone past 6pm and we’re moving towards 9pm,” he says.
Perth
Median: $535,617
Quarter: DOWN 1.5 per cent
Year: DOWN 5.8 per cent
Another stellar performer in past years – especially in 2005-06 when prices shot up 45 per cent – Perth is now the capital city with the worst-performing housing market. Wilson says Perth has entrenched low buyer and seller confidence in the marketplace, which is proving hard to shift. ”There is a glimmer of hope with a significant lift in home loans approved in May,” he says.
The rest
In the smaller markets of Adelaide and Hobart, Wilson says there are fewer buyers at the moment and that is because there are some question marks about the strength of their economies. In Adelaide, where the median price is $441,775, people are waiting for the expansion of the Olympic Dam project to give them a shot of confidence, Kusher says.
The market has slid back 2.1 per cent since last quarter and 3.1 per cent since this time last year.
Down in Hobart (with a median of $329,307), the housing market relies on retirees and others such as tree-changers to create demand and there is not a lot of them at the moment, Kusher says. The market has remained steady during the quarter but has dropped 2.6 per cent since June last year.
While Darwin (with a median of $593,642) had the largest quarterly fall of any capital city at 3.6 per cent, it was also the only one to record positive growth during the year – 1.3 per cent.
Darwin’s volatile results were ”as a consequence of seasonal economic activity and a shortage of housing”. Wilson says.
‘It’s a lot more affordable and a lot easier to get around’
Ace Popovich’s life has turned full circle. The architect and building contractor grew up in Canberra before moving to London and then Sydney, where he and his English-born wife lived for about 10 years in a small terrace in Waterloo.
Now with two young children, they are back in Canberra and about to move into a four-bedroom house on 800 square metres they bought in the inner-southern suburb of Narrabundah. They are among a wave of interstate migrants to the nation’s capital, that is helping keep some parts of the Canberra housing market relatively strong in the face of a national market in the doldrums.
The couple sold their two-bedroom Sydney terrace on 140 square metres for about $725,000 and, after spending $660,000 on their Canberra house, had enough left over to renovate before they move in next month. They hope to be in the same financial position as they were in Sydney but with a house they can live in for years, close to family and good schools. He and his wife have settled in ”really well”, Popovich says, and have both found jobs. ”We’re at a stage in our lives where it’s very convenient living in Canberra,” he says. ”It’s a lot more affordable and it’s a lot easier to get around.”
Source : Antony Lawes of the Sydney Morning Herald 30 July 2011
Capitals face at least a decade of unaffordable houses, even in the suburbs
AUSTRALIAN house prices have moved from being affordable to severely unaffordable in the past 10 years – and Sydney is still the least affordable capital city, a new study shows.
As well, once working-class cities such as Wollongong and Newcastle are as unaffordable as Sydney when local income is taken into account, and far-flung Sydney suburbs that were affordable in 2001 are now rated as severely unaffordable.
The study, by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) at the University of Canberra, and AMP, says it will take at least another 10 years of flat house prices, coupled with income growth, for houses to regain an affordable status.
Housing headaches … a new study says income growth and ten years of flat house prices are needed for houses to be considered affordable. Photo: Arsineh Houspian
”Housing unaffordability has spread like a cancer,” said Ben Phillips, principal research fellow at NATSEM and author of the report The Great Australian Dream – Just a Dream?.
The study found median house prices in Australia grew 147 per cent between 2001 and 2011 to $417,000, while median after-tax incomes only increased 50 per cent to $57,000.
This pushed the price-to-income ratio – the number of years’ worth of income needed to buy a typical dwelling outright – from an affordable 4.7 to a severely unaffordable 7.3. The report considers a dwelling just affordable if it costs no more than five times household income.
A typical Sydney home with a price of $510,000 costs about 8.4 times the average annual household income. Even though Sydney experienced the least growth in housing prices through the past decade – a mere 83 per cent compared with 222 per cent in Perth – it is still suffering the effects of the late 1990s boom, the report shows.
As well, Sydney households face the most housing stress with 28 per cent spending more than 30 per cent of after-tax income on housing expenses, compared with 18 per cent in Melbourne.
The report judged Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide to be ”severely” unaffordable and the other capitals merely unaffordable. Darwin and the ACT are the most affordable.
It said more than 50 per cent of all suburbs in the five main capital cities were affordable in 2001 but today only 4 per cent were affordable, not one in an inner-city area.
Inner-city Melbourne houses are the least affordable in the nation, even beating Sydney’s; despite Sydney’s somewhat higher prices, the weekly after-tax income of the Melbournites is about $175 a week less.
Mr Phillips said it was no longer just capital cities that faced affordability issues with regional house prices in the Northern Territory, Tasmania, Victoria and NSW outstripping growth in the capital cities.
He said home owners had experienced 10 years of increased housing value. ”They’re sitting pretty. Those renting, or who have recently purchased, face very steep prices. It’s a story of the haves and the have-nots,” he said.
Source : Adele Horin July 28, 2011 Sydney Morning Herald
Sydney avoids the drop – but only just
HOUSE prices continued to stagnate or deflate across the country in the June quarter, with only Sydney’s housing market showing signs of life.
Data from the Fairfax Media-owned Australian Property Monitors for the three months to June show Sydney escaped a national downturn in median house prices of 0.6 per cent, recording instead a slim rise of 0.1 per cent.
Melbourne remained stagnant. But over the year to June, prices fell by 2.1 per cent, the APM figures show.
”With the exception of Darwin, the Sydney and Melbourne housing markets have proved to be the best performers over the year,” an APM senior economist, Andrew Wilson, said.
The figures reflect consumer caution regarding debt as well as concern about the global economy.
Both Brisbane and Perth continued their long, slow decline, with median prices falling 1.3 and 1.5 per cent respectively. Canberra recorded a surprise 2.8 per cent fall over the quarter.
Darwin was up by 1.3 per cent over the year, but fell sharply in the quarter by 3.6 per cent. Adelaide was down 2.1 per cent while Hobart was flat.
The national median house price was $546,121. National unit prices were down 0.8 per cent to $404,753, the APM figures show.
Source : Sydney Morning Herald Simon Johanson July 28, 2011
Signs of life as auction results start to bloom
MORE positive signs emerged over the weekend for the Sydney housing market. Auction clearance rates rose to the highest levels for the year and are now consistently tracking the results recorded for the same time last year.
The number of properties being offered for auction still remains below the level at the same time last year. However, the gap is narrowing week-by-week, indicating an emerging market environment more typical of Sydney’s winter selling season.
The clearance rate at the weekend was 63.5 per cent compared with 52.6 per cent recorded the previous weekend and 65.4 per cent for the same weekend last year.
Buyers are slowly returning to the Sydney housing market.
Of the 210 reported auctions, 148 were sold, for a total value of $117.7 million at an average value of $790,540 per property sold. The median price of houses sold was $827,500 and for units it was $610,000.
The most expensive property reported sold at auction at the weekend in Sydney was a four-bedroom home in Seaforth that sold for $2.36 million. The most affordable property reported sold was a three-bedroom townhouse in South Penrith that was auctioned for $251,000.
Other signs of increased activity in the housing market are emerging. First-home buyers have been relatively quiet this year but recent Bureau of Statistics data has revealed a rise in first-home buyer activity.
Just over 2550 dwellings were financed by first-home buyers in May in NSW, which represented a 17.5 per cent increase over April’s total of 2175 home loans. This was the highest number of first-home buyer loans recorded since May last year.
Despite the monthly increase and the year-high totals, the proportion of first-home buyers in the marketplace remains low. Only 15.6 per cent of all home loans recorded in May were for first-home buyers, which is below the long-term average of 18.4 per cent.
However, the average value of first-home buyer loans has now risen for three months in a row, increasing from $294,300 in February to $312,200 in May, up by 6 per cent.
First-home buyer activity in Sydney should continue to increase through the year as affordability improves due to a relatively strong economy, rising incomes, continued stable interest rates, modest house price growth and high rents.
Sydney first-home buyers face a continuing struggle to secure property due to a general shortage of housing and chronically recessed levels of new housing supply.
Recent state government initiatives are designed to improve the supply of new housing, particularly for the first-home buyer market.
Source : Andrew Wilson, Sydney Morning Herald July 25, 2011
Dr Andrew Wilson is senior economist for Australian Property Monitors, part of Fairfax Media.
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