Tuesday, January 29, 2013

How to Get That Rental Property

If you are looking to rent a place, but you keep missing out to others, perhaps you need some tips from the experts. I came across a pretty good article in which the property professor gave some tips that renters should heed when trying to get that elusive rental property. Here are some of the tips from Peter Koulizos

1. BE PREPARED – You should have your application pack ready so that you can give it to the property manager at the inspection (if you like the property). Your application pack will include the real estate agency’s application form (which you can obtain and complete prior to the inspection) and your portfolio. Your portfolio should contain documents such as:
•Copy of photo ID e.g. driver’s license, passport, student ID card
•Copy of Medicare card
•References from employer/teacher/lecturer (not your mum and dad!)
•Pay slip (if you have a part time job)
•Copy of a bank account, phone account (this is evidence that you have some income and can pay some bills).
2. BE PROMPT – You should be outside the property waiting for the property manager. This shows that you are keen.
3. BE PRO-ACTIVE – Contact the property manager the following day to ask how the application process is coming along. Don’t sound too desperate on the phone but this indicates that you are keen and serious.
Follow the link to see the other two tips at the PerthNow website.

Friday, January 25, 2013

CommBank Releases Property Guide App

It seems that housing valuations are becoming more easily accessible with the emergence of mobile apps seeking to lure buyers into one home loan or another. The Commonwealth Bank has just released their own Property Guide app which you can download for free.

From the Map view, you can see what properties are for sale, or even zoom in closer and select any property not for sale to see details about that property (your house for example).


For individual properties, you can see the
  • Commonwealth Bank Home Lenders that are willing to see how much money they can loan you. 
  • Valuation Estimate from RPData, which gives a range as well as the level of confidence that they have in the valuation. 
  • Recent Sales which shows you all the recent sales around the property that you selected
  • Suburb Insight this will tell you whether the suburb currently favours buyers or sellers depending on the availability of properties vs demand. There is also a repayment calculator to help you work out how much you can afford to borrow.
For the house hunter and for those that just like to google themselves, this app will be quite useful and indicates the way of the future with the real estate market. It would be interesting to track how many people make an enquiry on a house from the app.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

$495k Median Price for Perth Houses

House prices in Perth are up 3% in the last quarter of 2012, with the median house price now sitting at $495,000 according to the Real Estate Institute of WA. Of particular interest was the 57% increase in sales in the western suburbs which, in recent times, has been quite slow. This is because most of the western suburbs are in the $600,000+ category.

17,171 first home buyers grants were paid out in 2012, which is a 28% increase on the previous year - a sign that the first home buyers are back in the market. There were more first home buyers as a percentage of all owner occupier dwelling finance than the 10 year average of 27% with 33% representing the new generation of home owners.

Friday, January 4, 2013

Who did well in 2012? House Prices Around Australia

Happy New Year, readers!

2012 was a very mixed year for the Australian housing market, with the average growth across the eight capital cities scraping just above 0% at 0.4% and when you look at individual capital city markets, it is very hard to draw a generalisation across the country. On one hand, Darwin experienced almost 9% growth in a year where the world's economies were on the brink of collapse. Melbourne felt a 2.9% slide in their housing market over the last 12 months meanwhile only less than 1000km away, Sydney rose by 1.5%.



Perth experienced a reasonable growth of 0.8% in 2012 with house prices sitting at $479,000. Here are the numbers for each capital city.
  • Darwin rose 8.9% to $505,000
  • Sydney rose 1.5% to $580,246
  • Perth rose 0.8% to $479,000
  • Hobart fell 0.1% to $317,500
  • Canberra fell 0.3% to $517,500
  • Brisbane fell 0.8% to $417,500
  • Adelaide fell 0.8% to $380,000
  • Melbourne fell 2.9% to $500,000

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