Are you planning to build a new home for yourself? Well! The time is just about ripe and you would be better off getting it built quickly enough. You may think why is this need to get it done quickly? Instead of taking a long dig at the answer, let me answer it straightaway for you.
Tracey's Property News
Low Cash Rate To Fuel Borrowing Activity
An article on the website realestate.com.au says that the Reserve Bank of Australia is considering cutting down the interest rate by a few more basis points to strengthen the low-growth areas. Dwindling Australian dollar, shaky import figures and sub-par performance of GDP is making the RBA think along these lines. Economists agree that the low rate of inflation gives the leverage to RBA to do so.
Low Interest Rates Promote Housing Market Recovery
Property market moves through cycles. You may think- Hang on! We aren’t being told this for the first time. No you aren’t. I am just taking this opportunity to reiterate the degree of truth in this statement. The market moves through crests and troughs and times of trough do not change overnight into peak or boom times. The graph moves gradually.
Borrowing Activity Smashes Past Records
The Australian Finance Group (AFG) has processed mortgages worth $3.6 billion in May. An article on the AFG website reveals that the May figures are a neat 13% above the $3.2 billion recorded for April. It is worth noting that mortgage sales in April had already smashed all past records and so further improvement in May is certainly a cause for delight.
Borrowings have risen across all demography. Western Australia leads the pack with an upswing of 17.7%. It is followed by Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland. FHBs, investors and owner-occupiers are all getting into the game.
Trends worth pondering over:
- Phenomenal increase in borrowing activity since Feb
- Loan size reported to be the same as last year
- Loan to Value Ratio trading close to the long term average
- Fixed rate loan activity has dipped slightly
You can read the original article here.
New Home Buyers To Benefit From Change In Grant Scheme
A few major housing grants have changed all across the country. Seeing the Goods and Services Tax weighing down home owners, the government came up with the First Home Owner Grant in the year 2000. It offered $7,000 to FHBs looking to buy a new or an existing home, says Emma Sorensen for the website realestate.com.au.
One major change proposed in the Grant is that it will be only available to new home buyers now. In other words, if you are buying an established home, you won’t be able to avail this government bounty. The Grants may vary subject to your place of residence and date of application.
For New South Wales, the First Home Owner Grant has been changed to the First Home Owner Grant (New Home) Scheme. Through the new scheme, you can avail $15,000 instead of $7,000 now and the cap has been brought down to $635,000 from $835,000. To reiterate, the Grant will only apply for new homes.
Those looking to relocate from their existing metropolitan home to a new regional home can now avail $7000 as part of the Regional Relocation Grant scheme.
You can read the original article here.
Nine quick tax tips for property investors
To be on the right side of law and the taxation system, you need to be diligent about planning and paying your taxes. Ken Raiss for the Property Update gives a few tax tips for the property investors.
