Mortgage provider RAMS Home Loans has joined with real estate data provider Residex to give property investors access to residential sales information.

Westpac-owned RAMS said the partnership would allow prospective investors to access Residex reports once they identify what suburb or suburbs they are interested in.

The reports include information such as median sale price, median rent, historical and predicted growth as well as a list of current properties for sale.
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Property prices in Sydney’s inner and middle rings could rise by up to 10 per cent this year.

The Real Estate Buyer’s Agents Association of Australia (REBAA) said much depended on the effect of rising interest rates and tighter loan conditions.

But property prices will rise in key centres in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, with Sydney in particular set to benefit from pent-up demand and increases of up to 10 per cent, it said.

REBAA president Byron Rose said that after a busy end to 2009, investors continued to show keen interest into 2010, with more buyers around than properties.

“We expect the current high levels of buyer activity to continue for the first half of the year,” he said in a statement outlining the association’s market predictions.
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Taking inspiration from the success of Zillow and Trulia’s ‘cool’ web site widgets, PriceFinder has recently released its own range of agent website tools for Australia. Widgets are an easy way to enhance your own website, increasing traffic and generating leads.

According to Kent Lardner, Chief Operating Officer of PriceFinder;
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A compromise has been reached on new land tax laws set to pass state parliament this week ahead of a new land tax regime to be drawn up with industry and brought in next year, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says.

Amendments to the Valuation of Land Amendment Bill, due to be debated last month, were delayed after industry groups opposed the changes as a money-grabbing exercise.

The changes were drawn up when a shopping centre won a court case that reduced its valuation, drawing concern the government would be forced to hand back millions in land tax if other appeals were also won.
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Australasia’s largest real estate and property group, Ray White, has recorded its best ever February residential sales result in Victoria.

Ray White Victorian General Manager Marcus Williams said preliminary statewide sales figures for February totalled in excess of $350 million - a 58 per cent increase on sales for the corresponding month in 2009.

Mr Williams said the highly active residential market was expected to continue at least in the short term despite the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) this week raising official interest rates to 4.0 per cent.
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Sales of new homes rebounded to a five-month high in January, a sign that upgrading owner occupiers and investors may be coming back in to the market, a leading industry body says.

New homes sales rose 9.5 per cent to 8,444 in January, the Housing Industry Association (HIA) said on Monday.

Sales rebounded from December’s 11 month low and were the highest since August 2009.

HIA chief economist Harley Dale said early signs of increased new housing activity needed to be backed up by further evidence.
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A new survey has shown home prices grew more strongly than expected in January, giving the Reserve Bank of Australia further ammunition to raise interest rates.

However, annual house price growth should moderate to single-digits in 2010 from the low to mid teen levels last year.

Across all capital cities home prices rose an average 1.8 per cent in January and 11.8 per cent over the previous 12 months, the RP Data-Rismark Hedonic Home Value Index showed.

“The data was certainly stronger than we expected,” Rismark International managing director Christopher Joye said.

“It is based on a typically seasonally small sample of sales for January, so one needs to exercise caution,” he said.
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Soaring house prices, rising interest rates and a winding back of the first homeowners grant all contributed to housing affordability taking a nose-dive at the end of 2009.

The deterioration was widespread in all capital cities and regional areas, with the largest falls recorded in Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra, according to a Housing Industry Association (HIA)/Commonwealth Bank of Australia survey.

Affordability tanked 18.4 per cent in the December quarter and was 22.3 per cent lower than 12 months earlier.

The association’s senior economist Ben Phillips said prior to the December quarter, first homebuyers had a small window of favourable affordability conditions to enter the market.
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The property industry is lobbying the Queensland government over changes to land tax which they say are an unprecedented cash grab.

The Property Council and Shopping Centre Council took out a full-page advertisement in The Courier-Mail newspaper on Thursday outlining their argument.

Last week, the government introduced to parliament a bill which Natural Resources Minister Stephen Robertson said would protect ordinary ratepayers from higher costs and provide financial certainty for local councils.

Mr Robertson said a recent Court of Appeal decision changed valuation rules for commercial property, with industrial landholders likely to gain a 20 per cent windfall, while the benefit would be 35 per cent for commercial landholders.
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Australasia’s largest real estate and property group, Ray White, has defied rising interest rates and the traditionally quiet summer holiday season to report a 16 per cent rise in residential sales in New South Wales during January.

Ray White NSW CEO Stephen Nell said the group in January achieved total residential sales of $355 million, compared to $306 million in the corresponding month in 2009.

“This is a great result considering so many offices are normally closed during much of January and consequently there is a lot less marketing of properties going on,” Mr Nell said.

“But a large number of our businesses stayed active through the festive season and they have reaped the rewards.”
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Activity in the construction sector expanded in January, with housing construction hitting a two year high on government stimulus, a survey shows.

The Australian Industry Group Performance of Construction Index rose 8.4 points to 57.7 in January, above the 50 level separating expansion from contraction.

In the industry’s strongest performance in two years, the house building sub-index grew 10.3 points to 63.7.

AI Group director public policy, Peter Burn, said the improved conditions coincided with the reporting of increased tendering opportunities, new contract wins and a further uptake of work stemming from the Federal Government’s infrastructure stimulus programs.
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The residential property market is expected to pare back to more moderate levels of price growth this year after a stellar performance for most of 2009, a survey finds.

The RP Data-Rismark Hedonic Home Value Index forecasts capital growth rates for residential homes to fall back to single-digit levels in 2010 after rises in the low- to mid-teens last year.

Rismark International managing director Christopher Joye said he predicted the housing market would cool as mortgage rates rose back to more normal rates of seven to eight per cent.

“This implies that capital growth rates will fall back to single-digit levels consistent with expected change in the incomes of prospective buyers,” Mr Joye said.
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Australasia’s largest real estate and property group, Ray White, has expanded its presence in Victoria due to an unprecedented sales surge over the past year.

Ray White Victorian General Manager Marcus Williams said new offices were being opened in Melbourne as well as regional Victoria to keep up with demand.

“We were breaking sales records almost every month during 2009 and we had our best ever result for December,” Mr Williams said.

“No one could have predicted this position 12 months previously as we entered the year shrouded in uncertainty about the economic outlook.

“But after a cautious start, demand for property, particularly in Melbourne, strengthened to a point where sales exceeded results achieved in the boom year of 2006.
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Australia’s banks are partly insulated from rising house prices and a profit upgrade by the nation’s largest lender, Commonwealth Bank, would result in higher than expected first half earnings, Fitch Ratings says.

The global rating agency said Australia’s major banks would be buffered by the impact of further rises in house prices and interest rates hitting consumers.

Fitch’s director of financial institutions, Tim Roche, said the agency took comfort from the “well seasoned” mortgage books of the banks which have an average loan-to-valuation ratio of around 60 to 70 per cent on an original valuation basis.

“If you look at it using the current value for houses that drops down to below 50 per cent for most of the houses,” he told media and analysts on Monday.
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Rents for homes across Australia increased nationally by a mere two per cent in 2009 - the weakest annual increase since 2002, a new report says.

The figure compares with average annual rent increases of 12 per cent across Australia for 2007 and 2008, Australian Property Monitors’ Quarterly Rental Report says.

“It is clear that in 2009 rents were generally kept in a holding pattern as landlords and the market waited to see the end of the global financial crisis,” Matthew Bell, an economist and spokesman for Australia Property Monitors, said in a statement.

The situation was likely to be short-lived, he warned, due to the likelihood of interest rates rising in 2010.

“Rising interest rates and land tax increases will impact on the bottom line for landlords, forcing some of these costs to be passed on to renters,” Mr Bell said.
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