Sydney is falling out of favour with property investors. It's becoming too expensive – even for them, say experts, and Queensland is benefitting from their investment dollars instead. A survey of 1000 property investors carried out by the Property Investment Professionals of Australia (PIPA) found that the years of booming prices have taken their toll and [...]
Just when you thought the banks couldn't make it any harder for first homebuyers to secure a place of their own, one of the major banks has announced you'll now need a 30% deposit if you want to buy in one of its blacklisted 'risky' suburbs. NAB's blacklist contains more than 600 suburbs and towns [...]
While location is still king when it comes to driving up real estate prices, there's something else that encourages buyers to pay more – even if they may not realise it. It turns out that a good, functional floor plan can make a property stand out from the crowd and have buyers fighting over it. [...]
There are no signs of new home construction slowing in Sydney, with the latest figures from the NSW Department of Planning & Environment reporting a 16-year high. Over the 2015/16 period more than 30,000 new homes were completed in Sydney – that's 10.4% up on the previous year. And two out of three new homes [...]
We LOVE the convenience of tumble dryers and the lovely fluffy clothes they give us, but there are some things you just need to take a little more time and effort over. Avoid the stress and cost of ruined clothes or – worse – an expensive dryer repair by keeping these things out of your [...]
Owning a home with a mortgage may give you a sense of financial security, but a new report by Roy Morgan has shown that 6.8% of people with a mortgage (311,000) in fact have hardly any real equity built up in their home. In these cases, people's homes were found to be worth the same, [...]
Forget the big four – and all the little banks for that matter. The fastest-growing source of finance for first home buyers in Australia is now… Mum and Dad. That's right – exorbitant house prices combined with super-low interest rates mean that more parents than ever before are refinancing their properties in order to give [...]
Fans of the movie 'Cars' will be pleased to know that there is technology on the way which will actually allow cars to talk to each other. Probably not as casually as Lightning McQueen and his friends did, but still, it's pretty cool. Telecoms giant Vodafone is currently testing a new system designed by the [...]
One of Australia’s biggest banks has announced big changes to the way it works with brokers, the aim being to improve customer service and minimise conflict between different sales channels – two causes we can certainly get behind. NAB this week revealed its updated broker offering which now gives customers who are introduced through brokers [...]
Selling a home can be one of the most stressful things you'll do in your lifetime. As can buying a home. Doing the two together? Surely double the stress. But buying BEFORE you sell? Why would anyone do that to themselves? The key to buying and selling simultaneously – or even buying before you sell [...]
Anyone setting out in property investment will face the question of whether to furnish their properties or keep them empty. A furnished apartment can fetch $50-$100 more a week in rent than its unfurnished counterpart, depending on the location and quality of furnishings. This might seem like quite a good deal for landlords, but some [...]
It would appear that the RBA don't like change very much, at their meeting today, the Board decided to leave the cash rate unchanged, so it will continue to sit at its record low of 1.50% for another month (which we are not complaining about!). In their official statement, the RBA stated "In Australia, the economy [...]
