Source:  Choice.com.au Figuring out what a property's worth is a tricky task, and when the market's hot, prices can change quickly. But an accurate assessment of the value is critical if you don't want to pay too much when you're buying, or miss the mark on your home's value when selling. Luckily, there are a bunch of resources out there to help some are free, while others will cost you. But how reliable are these sources, and how much do they differ in the...

The latest stats are out on Brisbane's rental market.  The Residential Tenancies Authority records the rent when a new bond is lodged and each quarter we analyse the results and get a handle on emerging trends.  Here's the numbers for the March quarter released last week:   Across Brisbane median weekly rent for a 2 bed apartment was flat at $420 On average, inner-city suburbs dropped $5 to $480/week (after a $5 rise in the previous quarter). R...

Source:  Myriam Robin   Foreign buyers are purchasing new housing in New South Wales and Victoria at a rate of $8 billion a year - a figure the equivalent of one in five new homes completed across the two states. The figures, available for the first time through a freedom of information request, come from state governments which now collect taxes from foreign buyers when the property is settled. The figures reveal the size, source and changes in foreign demand for Aus...

Liz Jordan, Australian Property Journal   POPULATION growth will soften a housing downturn in Australia, according to UBS. According to UBS, population growth lifted at 0.4% over the third quarter of 2016, at 1.5% or 349,000 people year-on-year, which is the equal fastest rate since the opening quarter of 2014. "For housing, while a sharp lift in dwelling completions and consequent jump in vacancy (and weaker rents) likely still lies ahead, this 'people boom...

Brian Bennion, South-East Advertiser PLANS to remove more than one-third of the character zoning from parts of Camp Hill and Coorparoo have been dropped under a revision to the draft Coorparoo and Districts Neighbourhood Plan. The council had planned to remove more than 1500 homes from the traditional building character overlay, but it was confronted by hundreds of residents opposing the plans at community meetings and information sessions. The council received 170 written subm...

Source: Ross Gittins, brisbanetimes.com.au If you learn nothing else about the economy, remember that it moves not in straight lines but in cycles of good times followed by bad times, and bad times followed by good. Nowhere is that truer than with our famed "two-speed economy". For most of the decade to 2012, the resources boom meant that the two main mining states Queensland and, especially, Western Australia were growing much faster than the rest of the economy, which ...

Source:  Kieran Clair, realestate.com.au Westpac chief economist Bill Evans says regulators are set to get tougher on investor loans. Westpac chief economist, Bill Evans, said a nervous regulator will look to ease investor activity in the property market during 2017. Speaking in Brisbane today at an Australian Property Institute event, Mr Evans said high house prices fuelled by investor demand are causing concern for the Reserve Bank of Australia. "We find ourselves ...

Source: Peter Martin, brisbanetimes.com.au The Reserve Bank is considering tighter bank lending standards amid concern about how the financial system would handle a collapse in housing prices, beginning with Brisbane apartments. The Bank's assistant governor (financial system) Michele Bullock told a business event in Sydney that the Reserve Bank was particularly uneasy about the "looming oversupply of apartments in Brisbane in particular, and possibly in some parts of Melb...

Jim Malo, Domain.com.au Real estate professionals say 2017 will be a crucial year for Brisbane's apartment market and that it's too early to tell if it will be able to cope with the record number of rental stock expected to be released in the next 12 months. It comes a week after the Reserve Bank flagged potential tighter lending standards because of the "looming oversupply of apartments in Brisbane, in particular". Domain Group chief economist Andrew Wilson s...

Kieran Clair, realestate.com.au There's an old valuers saying that you get one chance every 10 years to profit from main road properties, and that time is now, according to the experts. Registered Harcourts Solution valuer and property consultant Ben Anderssen said high demand for blue-chip locations had buyers compromising on position when looking to invest. "Because there's so little supply around, you find that people are happy to look at stock on main roads becaus...