It seems the latest hot property commodity is handled Down Under on Australia’s Sunshine Coast. With plenty of sun, gorgeous beaches and a trendy lifestyle as well as very affordable prices for those coming from the UK, it is no wonder that there seems to be a mass exodus. Ok, maybe not mass, but we are sure you get the picture.
With this years Formula 1 Grand Prix hotting up after just two races, we decided to feature special Formula 1 theme posts to bring some of the action to you. With every race we will feature some local information about real estate in the area so that you too can be a racy investor.
Melbourne, Australia offered a great start to the season on 16.March and only 8 of the 22 drivers managed to finish the race. The guys on the podium were:
Brisbane’s brisk lifestyle
Australians are beginning to feel the pinch as cracks begin to appear in their real estate market. In a recent report on Australian news website, thedaily.com.au, real estate agents in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast are gearing themselves for a property price drop by as much as 30% in the next 18 months.
Well they are numerous reasons that have been largely linked to rising interest rates, soaring petrol prices and the recent stock market crash.
Thursday, December 20th, 2007 
Posted by Overseas Property Mall in Billionaire Homes, New Zealand Property, Waterfront Property
Fancy your own private island in Fiji? Now’s your chance. New Zealand estate agents, Bayleys Realty Group have three to choose from – all at less than £3 million each. Two of the Islands are in Fiji, the third in Marlborough sounds, NZ. Toberua Island sits two kilometres east of Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu, comes with 1.62ha of land and a 15-bure resort operation that has attracted a number of celebrity visitors recently. The island, with resort, is for sale for $3.9 million plus 12.5 per cent Fijian value added tax.
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 Posted by Overseas Property Mall in Australian Property, Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT)Australia has one of the oldest established REITs frameworks in the world, dating from the early 1970s. In Australia they are known as LPTs (Listed Property Trusts). LPTs come in two forms, firstly, the pure real estate portfolio investments and, secondly, so-called ‘stapled securities’ which would in this instance tie up the direct property investments with investment in a fund manager and/or a property development company. Stapled securities could be seen as an attempt to overcome the country’s relative shortage of potential real estate investments (see below) by diluting the pure real estate LPTs portfolios. The most distinctive feature of Australian LPTs is the investor’s ability to postpone paying tax on part of the income stream from their LPT investment. Typically, the untaxed element of the dividend would be applied to the capital gains tax calculation with the effect of creating a notional (lower) LPT purchase price so that the CGT bill is higher when the investor comes to sell their LPT. It seems that the flexibility in terms of target investments and in paying tax on one’s investment adds up to a more versatile type of investment instrument than the new regimes in Germany and the UK allow for. As in other countries, Australian LPTs are required to distribute to all of their income.
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Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 Posted by Overseas Property Mall in Australian Property, International Real Estate Trends, Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), United States PropertyIn our forthcoming piece on Australian REITs we shall be looking at the key role played by the country’s pension funds in property investment. Unlike UK staff superannuation sector where pensions seem to be on track for death by a thousand cuts, Australia pension funds are riding high on the back of an increase in statutory contribution levels in 2002. The result is that Australia has a lot of investable cash looking for good returns and given the limited size of the country’s real estate market, it is not surprising that a lot of this money is going overseas.
The figures are impressive with US$ 7.7bn invested in US property so far this year. This compares to a total of $ 5.5bn invested by Australia in US real estate in the whole of 2006 and gives Australia some 43% of total inward investment into US real estate for 2007 to-date. The reasons that the US is so much in favour are, according to Mark Baillie of Macquarie Bank, a liquid market, good governance and a relatively benign tax regime when it comes to repatriating profits and income.
Auckland Harbour and Sky Tower - New Zealand [Photo credits to Travelling Pooh on Flickr]
From the standpoint of someone living in the UK, New Zealand’s housing market exhibits some familiar trends. Overall the situation seems benign for the middle aged and much less so for younger people who have yet t0o get a foothold on the property ladder. New Zealand mortgages tend overwhelmingly to be fixed (85% of the total) and this skews the impact of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s interest rate (Official Cash rate – OCR) rises in a similar way to the Bank of England’s; causing a marked time lag between a rise and the looked-for effect. In fact, New Zealand’s interest rates are the second highest in the developed world (after Iceland’s).
At the moment house prices seem to be rising at an impressive rate. Quotable Value New Zealand, the property valuation arm of Statistics New Zealand recorded an average rise of 12.2% in the 12 months to June, the highest increase recorded since (the 12 months to) May 2006. Despite the steady rise in interest rates so far this year and the estimated 26% of fixed rate mortgages that are up for renewal in the next two months, commentators seem unsure as to whether there is going to be a housing downturn.
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 Posted by Overseas Property Mall in Australian Property, Jamaica Property, Malaysian Property, Miami Property, Property News Summaries, Syria Property, Turkish Property, UK Property
Friday, February 23rd, 2007 Posted by Overseas Property Mall in Australian Property, International Real Estate TrendsAustralian property investors spent over four times as much in overseas direct property investments last year, with growing interest in Western Europe, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.
According to their recent report, local investors poured $6.7 billion into overseas real estate in the first half of 2006, compared to $1.52 billion in the first half of 2005.
The US received almost half (46 per cent) of overseas investments, making Australians the third largest cross border investors in the US after global and Middle Eastern investors.
However, the fund flows are slowly shifting to European markets with Germany getting 19 per cent of the funds, or around $1.27 billion. The largest overseas acquisition was made by Record Realty, which bought seven office assets in Germany leased to Deutsche Telekom for a total $520 million.
Matthews said the rest of Western Europe enjoyed more than 14 per cent of inflows.
“Investments were also made in Belgium (6 per cent), the UK (3 per cent), Poland (2 per cent), the Netherlands (2 per cent) and France (1 per cent) over this time.”
In Asia, Hong Kong was the most popular choice accounting for 12 per cent of investor money. Macau, South Korea and New Zealand fund flows trailed behind at 4 per cent, 2 per cent and 2 per cent respectively.
John Talbot, the group’s head of capital markets, said that many investors are renewing their interest in the more established markets of Singapore and Japan. “While the US and Europe continue to represent the main focus for Aussie investors, increasingly Asia is coming onto the radar with core mature markets like Singapore and Japan of most interest.”
According to the report, property investors are buying more property overseas than they are selling with foreign purchases making up 60 per cent of total cross border transactions.
Source: Financial Standard
Thursday, February 15th, 2007 Posted by Overseas Property Mall in Australian Property, General, Irish Overseas Property Market, Property Industry News, UK PropertyGLASGOW tycoon David Lockhart is laughing all the way to the bank after pocketing £11million. He made the killing after deciding to sell his property group Halladale to an Australian firm for £171m. The multi-million pound pay-off is a bumper dividend for the former family lawyer who launched his property firm from rented premises in Gordon Street in Glasgow 16 years ago.
The workforce of 42 manage assets worth almost £1billion. Halladale has a comprehensive property portfolio, much of it centred on office accommodation in London and South East England. The firm also has a fund management division.
Halladale has been bought by Stockland, Australia’s largest housing developer. Mr Lockhart is to become executive chairman.
Source: Evening Times
Also read: Australian firm Stockland makes first move into Europe
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