Latest News & Blog

Image: 16 Morcom Ave, Ringwood East sold for $918,000 in the December quarter. The suburb experienced the biggest median house price growth of any Melbourne suburb in that period.   MELBOURNE’S median house price has surged past three-quarters of a million dollars for the first time, new data shows. The figure now sits at a record $770,000, according to the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, after shooting up 5 per cent in the three months to December 31. Experts expect it to keep going up in 2017, until half of Melbourne’s houses cost more than $800,000, as sellers remained in the...

An online property agency has warned that “thousands of buyers” of off-the-plan apartments in Victoria could lose their deposits following changes in design standards. The iBuyNew Group points out that the upcoming Better Apartments Design Standards, which will come into effect in March 2017, set minimum size standards for rooms.  Although the new standards do not go as far as setting minimum apartment sizes (as is the case in Sydney, where one-bedroom apartments must be a minimum of 58 square metres), iBuyNew said the big four banks are tightening their lending policies and are “refusing...

GOT your heart set on investing in real estate this year? These are the suburbs within 20km of capital city CBDs that are still affordable — and show good potential of further capital growth. The best value capital city growth suburbs have been revealed in a new report released by the PRDnationwide research team. The suburbs were analysed on short and midterm median house price growth, online interest, volume of sales, median rental price, vacancy rates and rental yields. PRDnationwide Chairman and Managing Director, Tony Brasier, said the planned commercial, residential and industrial...

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce would have some Melburnians believe the only way they could afford a house is to pull up stumps and move hundreds of kilometres away. There is no doubt houses in Melbourne are expensive — the median now sits at $795,447 — but that figure is inflated by more than 100 suburbs, predominantly in the inner north, the inner east and inner south, with a median more than $1 million. There are plenty of suburbs, 185 to be exact, where buyers can pick up a house for less than the Melbourne median house price, Domain Group data reveals.   Sure, buyers may...

House prices are predicted to climb even higher in Sydney and Melbourne in 2017, albeit at a slower pace than last year, according to new forecasts from National Australia Bank. The bank's economists on Tuesday lifted their forecast for national house prices, citing new survey figures on sentiment towards property, and the assumption interest rates will fall further this year. They are predicting a 4.5 per cent rise in Sydney house prices and a 5.6 per cent lift in Melbourne. This would be a slowdown compared with the double digit growth in prices that both cities experienced in recent...

The fat profit margins Airbnb hosts can reap on their properties are proving more attractive than the money Aussie investors can make as traditional landlords, a new study has found. A new global index comparing how long it took to make back the value of a property via Airbnb versus the conventional rental market named Sydney, Perth and Melbourne in the top 50 global cities where owners could recoup costs quicker via the sharing platform. The data, from London-based online estate agent Nested, shows a three-bedder in Sydney — one of the most expensive cities on the list in terms of both...

Another year, another doomsday theory for the housing market. And likely with it, a stack of book sales. It has practically become an annual sport for Australia’s economists to swat away the latest predictions of researchers and think tanks who are waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under the property market. “There have been numerous calls of a looming crash in Australian property over the last decade or so, but they have proved to be well off the mark,” said AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver. “Lately it seems to me that some people have just seen The Big Short and want to...

Sydney rates as the second-most expensive city for house prices globally, pipped only by Hong Kong for the second year running, according to researcher Demographia. Five of the 29 cities rated in the group’s annual Housing Affordability Survey as “severely unaffordable” were in Australia. The median price of a house in Sydney was 12.2 times the city’s annual median household ­income, while in Hong Kong it was 18.1 times. Vancouver was the third-most unaffordable city at 11.8 times and Auckland came in at number four. Melbourne was also in the 10 most expensive cities for housing and was...

  The dream of home ownership is slipping away from more young buyers as Melbourne’s already expensive house prices soar to new heights.    Many will continue to battle predicted price rises this year, compounded by tougher lending rules, low income growth and rising rents. House prices have grown every quarter for just over four years, with the latest 3.6 per cent rise pushing the city’s median to $795,447, the Domain Group’s rental and house price report shows. A typical unit buyer will also have to dig deeper: the median jumped 2.3 per cent to $459,181 over the December quarter. This...

  Image: The Lee family Tammy, Ava (7), Adam and Taj (9) have had their Redcliffe home on the market for three months with no offers. Picture: Steve Ferrier/The West Australian.   Activity in WA’s property market has reached its lowest point in 12 years, but new-home sales are increasing. The total number of documents lodged with Landgate — a barometer for total sales across new and established homes — was down 2 per cent last month and down 12 per cent from the same time in 2015. Victoria Park real estate agent Laurie Kelly said the past few years had been the toughest since he...