HomeMate.com.au

New First Home Buyers incentive hurts second home buyers. Queensland general manager of Brisbane-based developer Devine Homes, Paul Nash, said second-home buyer demand has been sluggish, but when the $21,000 first-home owner’s grant was introduced in October, there was a pickup in first-home owner inquiry. First Home buyers charge petering out “We had a spike, [...]

Residential real estate property developer Australand Property Group has scaled back its development plans after posting an 85% slump in annual profit. Australand on Wednesday reported net profit for the 2008 calendar year fell to $40.16 million, from $269.23 million in 2007. It booked an unrealised loss from revaluations of $96.98 million and writedowns to residential [...]

Selling your home? A small quick profit is a good profit when selling. Last year a Gold Coast couple refused an offer of $14.5 million for their beachfront home development site. Last week they had to let it go for $9 million at auction as the financial crisis bites. The house on the Gold Coast’s [...]

Coastal towns from Tully in Queensland to Upper Burnie in Tasmania are tipped to be among next year’s property hotspots, as house prices in capital cities experience modest falls and upmarket property languishes under the strain of the financial crisis. In its final property pulse report of the year, RP Data says it expects first-home [...]

A massive one percent interest rate cut this week, on top of the two previuos big rate cuts has made more than 43,000 home borrowers Australia’s biggest losers. And they only have themselves to blame for not listening to Mr Mortgage. The costs of exiting an average fixed-rate mortgage jumped to $18,000 because break fees for [...]

First home buyers are allegedly forward dating contracts to illegally claim the boosted first-home grant. Some dodgy real estate agents and mortgage brokers are encouraging the fraud, suggesting buyers change the date of existing contracts to fall after October 14 so they qualify for the latest lucrative federal government grants. Forward-dating contracts could net first-home [...]

The sale of new homes rose strongly in October, the same month as Government assistance to first time owners was tripled and interest rates cut further, a survey shows. Yet despite the first monthly sales increase in four months for new homes, the housing industry says a recovery in the sector is still some way [...]