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...

Source:  CoreLogic Commenting on the January results, CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless said, "The positive result was broad-based with every capital city (excluding Darwin) recording a rise in dwelling values over the month.  The largest month-on-month gains were recorded in Hobart (+1.4%), Sydney (+1.0%) and Melbourne (+0.8%)." Index results as at January 31, 2017 Region
  Change in Dwelling Values Median
...

Source: Domain Queensland unit owners could soon be forced to sell their homes against their will if 75 per cent of the neighbours in their block agree. And even if the "forced sale" vote threshold is not reached, individual owners and body corporates will be able to appeal to a District Court to push their plans through, under proposed changes to apartment laws. The forced sales proposals are the centrepiece of wide-ranging plans to update the Body Corporate and Communi...

Source:  CoreLogic
Capital gains accelerated over the past year, taking the calendar year growth rate to the fastest pace since 2009, according to the December CoreLogic Home Value Index. December 2016 saw capital city dwelling values rise by 1.4%, taking the annual capital gain for 2016 to 10.9%; the highest  growth rate for a calendar year since 2009.  Factoring in gross rental yields and capital gains, housing as an asset class, earned a total annual return of ...