HomeMate.com.au

Qld home builders have seen home buyers disappear as first home buyers stay away. A lot of home builders are hurting right now, especially in Queensland, where the sale of new homes could be 20% down on 2010, itself a down year. Whilst first home buyers have not been a major force in new home [...]

Whilst I recommend the article, there is a annoying reference to mortgage brokers at the beginning of the article that riles me, here.

Mortgage brokers hip deep in profits handed out no-doc mortgages to people with fictional incomes. Wall Street shopped bundles of those loans to investors, no matter how unappetizing the details. And federal regulators gave sleepy nods.
That world largely collapsed under the weight of its improbabilities in 2008.

The Good News. New home sales are happening as we speak
Home builders that are building home designs that customers want, or on difficult lots or are custom designing homes for their clients will fair well because they are customer focused.
How New Home Builders are making sales in this market month in month out

I was sitting in my Display home sales office at Waterford in late February 2011, surveying the empty visitors parking lots. It had been this way in January before the floods. [Everything right except the "sales" part.]

New Home builders are feeling the pinch as new home sales go south After a spike in new home sales in October 2009, and rate rises by the RBA, November new home construction slumped. Maybe its time to reduce interest rates. In fact, some are now talking as if the RBA will be lowering the [...]