Online real estate company REA Group Ltd is preparing to face its biggest competitor yet, Google, but remains confident it can build revenue after withdrawing from the UK and New Zealand.
Chief executive Greg Ellis played down Google as a threat to REA’s 900,000 listings and five million unique browsers on its realestate.com.au website, saying competition was always good.
Google announced this week it would list properties on its Google Maps application.
“It’s a fairly rudimentary service, ” Mr Ellis said of the Google initiative.
” … Google’s a very good company, it is competition, but we welcome competition because it makes us stay sharper and more focused for our customers and consumers,” Mr Ellis said.
“Our position in the marketplace is very strong, we are the market leader in online real estate.
Full Story
National property valuation group, Opteon, today announced a further extension of its services and geographic coverage in Western Australia and New South Wales.
Effective immediately established regional valuation businesses, Kimberley Property Services and Albany Valuations from WA and Langshaw Valuations in NSW will join and co-brand with the national group, which last year completed 670,000 valuations for banks, all levels of government and corporate Australia.
Full Story
One in five homeowners would consider renting out a spare room to help pay the mortgage in increasingly difficult economic times, a new survey has found.
The poll by real estate agency PRDnationwide also found 14 per cent of respondents already had someone renting a room and another 15 per cent would do so if they had the space.
PRDnationwide research director Jonathan Rivera said the results were not surprising given the present economic climate.
“Having someone contributing $100 a week to rent a spare room could be the difference of struggling with bills or not,” he said.
Full Story
The number of new home sales declined for the first time in four months in May as fewer first home buyers entered the market, a survey says.
The number of new home sales fell 5.7 per cent in May, according to new figures released by the Housing Industry Association (HIA) on Tuesday.
New home sales had risen for the first four months of 2009.
“The small pull back in sales in May is likely to reflect a plateauing of first home buyer activity combined with continued weakness in the trade-up and investor markets,” HIA said.
Full Story
Australasia’s largest real estate group, Ray White, achieved almost a 70 per cent clearance rate and sales of more than $40 million in its latest series of Auction Spectacular residential property events in Queensland.
Auction Spectaculars are being held during June and July at locations throughout Australia and New Zealand, with four events staged in South-East Queensland over the past week.
Ray White Chief Auctioneer Philip Parker said 120 properties were listed at the four auctions in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and so far 83 had been sold with more than $40 million in sales generated.
Mr Parker said the largest of the Brisbane auctions was held yesterday at the Emporium Hotel in Fortitude Valley when 41 mostly inner-city properties were listed.
Full Story
Rental vacancy rates across NSW have dropped even further with Sydney recording its lowest rate in 12 months, Real Estate Institute figures show.
The Hunter, Central Coast, Sydney and the Illawarra have fewer rental properties available, new monthly figures from the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales (REINSW) show.
Sydney’s vacancy rate plunged 50 basis points from 1.5 per cent in April to 1.0 per cent in May.
Full Story
By Kent Lardner for Lending Central
The Wall Street Journal did an analysis of the Zillow valuation model for 1,000 home sales in early 2007. It found that “the median difference between the Zillow estimate and the actual price was 7.8 percent.”
According to The Wall Street Journal test results, when it was wrong it was very wrong, off by 25 percent for one in 10 properties. This is certainly the case here in Australia too. You could be testing a model and find the first 9 properties return amazing results, all within a few percent of the sale price, then the next one could be 20% or more off target. It’s these few large errors that have such a significant impact on the forecast standard deviation (error estimate).
Full Story
Australasia’s largest real estate group, Ray White, expects to sell tens of millions of dollars worth of residential property in Queensland this week when it hosts its latest series of Auction Spectacular events.
Auction Spectaculars are being held until to July 1 at locations throughout Australia and New Zealand, including four in South-East Queensland featuring more than 140 properties.
Ray White CEO Business Growth Mark McLeod said the first of the Queensland Auction Spectaculars will be held at the Kedron Wavell Services Club at Chermside in Brisbane’s north from 6pm tomorrow night.
There will also be events at the Marriott Hotel at Surfers Paradise from 11am on Thursday and at the BTP Centre at Browns Plains in Brisbane’s south on Thursday night. The fourth mega-auction will be staged on Sunday at the Emporium Hotel in Fortitude Valley.
Full Story
Listed real estate group ING Office Fund has completed a $330 million equity raising and will use the proceeds to pay down debt.
ING Office Fund raised the funds from a $90 million placement of new stapled securities to institutions and a two-for-five rights offer than raised $240 million.
The offer price was 45 cents per security. The stock last traded at 55.5 cents.
“The strong result of the equity raising demonstrates the continued confidence and support in IOF’s traditional real estate investment trust model and strategy,” ING Office Fund chief executive Tino Tanfara said.
Full Story
Hundreds of Victorian landholders face compulsory acquisitions and many more will be taxed thousands of dollars as green wedges make way for urban sprawl.
As the Victorian government prepares for Melbourne’s population to swell to five million by 2030, a blueprint for new fringe suburbs has been unveiled.
The government will expand growth corridors in the north, west and southeast, bringing with them new road and rail links.
An extra 41,000 hectares of land will be rezoned for development, making way for 284,000 more homes.
Full Story
Australasia’s largest real estate group, Ray White, expects to sell millions of dollars worth of property in one morning when it launches its latest trans-Tasman Auction Spectacular in Melbourne on Sunday.
Ray White Victoria General Manager, Marcus Williams, said the Auction Spectacular would be held by the Ray White group from June 21-July 1 at locations throughout Australia and New Zealand.
Mr Williams said more than 700 properties went under the hammer at the last series of super auctions in March this year, helping the Ray White group achieve record monthly sales of $2.37 billion.
“For our first time hosting an Auction Spectacular we had tremendous success with sales of more than $9 million generated from the Melbourne event,” Mr Williams said.
Full Story
The NSW Government is not considering slashing stamp duty on new homes, despite Property Council claims the move would kick-start the state’s housing construction, employment and economic activity.
The council’s proposal would see stamp duty abolished for all newly constructed dwellings valued below $1 million for the 2009/2010 financial year.
Economic forecasters BIS Shrapnel backed the idea, saying such a “bold fiscal stimulus measure” would bring multiple benefits.
The scheme would come at a budgetary cost of $54 million to the government, but would stimulate the construction of 8,000 new homes and generate $1.77 billion in construction activity, BIS Shrapnel said.
Full Story
I’d like to say a huge thank you to our newest sponsors for this month. Without their support, we wouldn’t be in the position to bring you all the latest news and issues from around the industry.
In no particular order:
- ValuePro
- Wealth Today
Interested in seeing your message here? There are banner advertising options available - find out more information here
photo credit: parhessiastesA former building inspector at a disgraced Melbourne council faces possible criminal charges over a dodgy property deal with a Buddhist monk.
Peter Anastasi is accused of abusing his power at Brimbank council to buy a house and forcing the seller to undertake repairs.
An ombudsman’s report, tabled in the Victorian parliament on Wednesday, found Mr Anastasi bought an Ardeer house from a Buddhist community group that was subject to a building order.
He then allegedly cancelled the order and destroyed council records of the property.
Full Story
Listed real estate investment trusts (REITs) offer good longer term returns because many of them have recently raised equity to buy heavily discounted properties, the world’s biggest real estate company says.
Steve Carroll, senior managing director of CB Richard Ellis’s (CBRE) global real estate securities division, says REITs offer historically good value after the 55 per cent fall in the sector’s price globally since February 2007.
REITs had raised $US25 billion ($A31.2 billion) globally in equity to repay debt and give themselves ready cash to buy properties that would be come available over the next 12 months.
“There are now a growing number of companies positioning their capital structures to buy what we believe will be heaps of distressed commercial real estate assets that will come to market in the coming 12 to 24 months,” Mr Carroll told media in a telephone conference.
Full Story
Loading ...
