NYE Party Of The Decades: Raising Funds For Bushfire Relief

As the new decade approaches it’s such a surreal feeling that on one hand there’s a sense of anticipation about what’s ahead in 2020 and beyond. Then, on the other hand it’s hard to even consider celebrating with so many Australians being impacted by the devastation of the bushfires currently ravaging through community after community leaving many families homeless and completely gutted by the loss of loved ones.

Even though there was a lot of controversy over any fireworks being held, with several displays being cancelled, it’s good to see so much money has been donated to the www.redcross.org.au/NYE during the ABC’s Party Of The Decades concert held at Sydney Opera House.

These bushfire ravaged communities are going to need lots of support, not just in the coming days or weeks, but these families who are having a really tough night tonight will need to be supported for many months and possibly years to come to rebuild their lives.

If you’d also like to support these Australian communities that are currently ‘under-fire’, together we can all do our bit to help by donating via www.redcross.org.au/NYE or calling ‭1800 733 276‬ (1800 RED CROSS)

Merry Christmas + Acreage Update: A Review of the Past Decade

As this decade comes to an end, it’s hard to believe the changes we’ve seen over this past 10 years.

For example, this time last decade Rouse Hill Town Centre had only recently opened. Now it’s become the major shopping hub for this district ...and it’s been extra busy over these past few weeks throughout the Christmas period.

The rapid expansion of the North West Growth Centre has seen acreage properties being rezoned and extensive development throughout Box Hill, Riverstone, Schofields, Rouse Hill, Vineyard and Marsden Park which included the Sydney Business Park with IKEA and Costco, etc, as well as the development of large estates like Elara, The Gables and The Hills of Carmel.

During this past decade we’ve also seen the development of land subdivisions in Pitt Town, the Redbank Estate in North Richmond, along with the release of several acreage subdivisions around Kenthurst, Maraylya, Cattai, Kurrajong, Kurmond, Blaxlands Ridge, Sackville North, Maroota, Wilberforce and Grose Vale.

In regards to Infrastructure, the duplication of Windsor Road, Richmond Road and Schofields Roads, along with the opening of the Sydney Metro have been some of the more significant projects completed in the area this past decade.

In relation to the market, median prices have typically doubled across the acreage market over the past decade, whereas, in the areas that were rezoned like Box Hill, Schofields, etc. the median price quadrupled as developers bought up big during the boom that we experienced mid-way through this past decade.

As 2019 draws to a close, there’s a lot more confidence in the housing market and we’re anticipating strong price growth for acreage properties at the start of the New Year, with lots of buyers flooding back into the acreage market.

During this upcoming decade, the construction of Sydney's 2nd airport and the aerotropilis projects around Badgerys Creek, plus, the release of Marsden Park North and West Schofields precincts, it looks like acreage properties around the fringes of Sydney will continue to provide a blue chip investment opportunity.

At the same time, rural properties nearby will still enjoy the lifestyle of acreage as well as strong price growth along with the added convenience of having new facilities built closer to their doorstep.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what opportunities this next decade has in store for my acreage clients.

At this time, I’d especially like to share my heartfelt thanks to all of the dedicated firefighters who are bravely protecting our communities and my thoughts and prayers go out to all of those impacted who have lost loved ones, lost homes or are displaced during this Christmas period as a result of the fires. It's devastating at anytime, but, it's especially harder around Christmas.

There are several people I know who have lost loved ones this year and I wish them extra love, strength and support throughout this difficult Christmas period.

To all of my clients, I would like to thank you all for the opportunity to be of assistance to you throughout this past year. It's been a pleasure to be of service to you.

To everyone watching I wish you a wonderful, joyous Christmas and a safe 2020 full of good health, fun, love and lots of good times.

Thanks for watching. Merry Christmas everyone.

UPDATE: Richmond Bridge Duplication Submission Deadline Extended

For anyone interested in the Richmond Bridge Duplication, I received an email earlier this afternoon from Transport for NSW stating that they have extended the submission deadline until Friday 17th January 2020.

“Good afternoon

Transport for NSW appreciates the community’s interest in proposed options for the Richmond Bridge duplication and traffic improvements project.

After listening to the community and to ensure all feedback is received, Transport for NSW has agreed to extend the submissions deadline for the proposal to Friday 17 January 2020.

The community and stakeholders are encouraged to provide their feedback via email, phone or the interactive map on the project page.

You can also find the interactive map on the project page https://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/projects/richmond-area-projects/richmond-bridge-duplication-and-traffic-improvements.html

You are receiving this email following your interest in the Richmond Bridge Duplication Project. If you no longer want to receive project updates please reply with ‘unsubscribe’ to this email.”

It’s quite interesting to see the differing opinions on each route proposed on the Interactive Map.
Don’t forget to have your say, at https://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/projects/richmond-area-projects/richmond-bridge-consultation-map.html before the Jan 17th 2020 deadline.

I hope you find this helpful.

Regards

Greg Vincent

Property Data Is Not A One-Size-Fits-All

There are so many different ways that the media sources interpret their housing market statistics, but, mostly the percentage increases or decreases rarely relate directly back to the statistics required to interpret what’s actually happening within each of the acreage sectors.

IMPORTANT: Every acreage property has to be assessed on its own merits, improvements, situation and nature.

Property statistics are general broad-brush indicators and even in the housing sector some properties will set new street records, whereas, often a similar property in the same street may sell at a much lower price due to forced sale circumstances or appointment of an under-skilled agent using a poorly executed marketing campaign.

Also, a lot of statistics are based upon sales that have settled, whereas, a switched-on real estate agent normally has their finger on the pulse about current offers, under contract pricing and unconditional exchanged prices.

Whereas Tim Lawless from CoreLogic reported in a recent article, that “The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports on housing prices quarterly using a stratified median methodology.  This method is different to CoreLogic’s hedonic regression series; in simple terms, the stratification methodology measures price changes across a number of ‘strata’ or sub-regions before aggregating the data back to the capital city level.  Generally the ABS and CoreLogic measures show very similar trends over time, however, the CoreLogic series is more timely (one day in arrears), higher frequency (monthly rather than quarterly) and provided across small regions as well as quartile and decile based valuation cohorts.”

Image Source: CoreLogic

Sydney 
The ABS reported a 3.6% rise in Sydney housing values over the quarter compared with a 3.5% rise in the CoreLogic index.  The growth trend is skewed towards houses (+4.0%) compared with the unit sector (+2.8%).  Since the September quarter, the CoreLogic index has continued to gather pace, with November results showing Sydney housing values rose at  their fastest monthly pace since 1988.

Image Source: CoreLogic

As explained in Tim Lawless’s article, “Differences between the indices can be explained by a number of factors.  Although both index providers utilise the same source data (CoreLogic supplies the record level data that powers the ABS residential property price index), the methodologies for cleaning and filtering the underlying transaction data are likely to be very different, and there are also likely to be differences in how property types are derived (houses v units).  Of course there are also the pure methodological differences with the ABS utilising a stratified median while CoreLogic prefers a hedonic regression series.  

Despite the differences, its clear that over time both series show very similar trends.  The housing market is clearly on a strong recovery path in the largest cities and growth is now rippling out to many of the smaller capital cities.”

There are several suppliers of property data information like SQM Research “who is an independent property advisory and forecasting research house which specialises in providing accurate property related advice, research & data” along with Australian Property Monitors APM who “as a leading property intelligence platform in Australia since 1989, deliver data to banking, insurance, media, real estate and government industries; making it easier to navigate data for better insights and business growth.”

Then there’s the valuers, like Herron Todd White who provide their monthly report which includes the National Property Clock.

Image Source: Herron Todd White

No two acreage properties are the same and the perceived value is highly subjective and can be influenced by numerous external and personal factors.

So whilst the property data reporting about the housing sector is extremely interesting to track and use to reinforce decisions to invest within different markets, how much your property has changed in price within the current market is definitely NOT a simple One-Size-Fits-All answer.

If you’d like to how to maximise the value of your property and get a professional indication of what your acreage property should sell for in the current market, please feel welcome to contact me personally or Request An Appraisal

I hope you found this article helpful.

Regards

Greg Vincent

PS: For an insight into The Year in Property, see today’s article by John McGrath here

Black Friday - Acreage Market Wrap

Hi, Happy Black Friday, my name is Greg Vincent and welcome to The Acreage Market Wrap where we discuss what’s happening throughout the Hawkesbury, Hills and North West Sydney acreage market.

We’ve just come out of a much busier Spring period than was experienced last year, where amongst The Hawkesbury area 70 acreage properties were Sold. This is almost double the amount of sales that happened during Spring 2018 within The Hawkesbury and the other areas have experienced an increase in sales as well.

There’s still a large volume of stock currently available with an overall total of 432 acreages for sale across all regions with 254 for sale in The Hawkesbury, 124 in The Hills, and around the North West area of Penrith there are 29 and 25 acreages for sale in the Blacktown development area.

Whilst there’s currently still quite a selection of acreage available, we should see sales of acreage properties increase even further in the early part of 2020 due to a number of factors.

Firstly, confidence has come back into the market after the result of both the State & Federal elections plus APRA made changes to their Assessment Rate which increased borrowing capacities, the Reserve Bank reduced interest rates several times over the past 6 months leaving the cash rate at historically low levels and the banks have freed up lending.

When you add in all of these factors, especially the low cost of funding along with the significant price corrections which have occurred throughout the acreage sector over these past few years, right now acreage properties are significantly more affordable to purchase today than they were a couple of years ago, but that won't be the case for long.

You see, the housing property market has experienced significant price growth over the past few months plus the media have stopped all of the doom & gloom reporting and are now back talking about the booming Sydney market again.

Source: Herron Todd White

Property Valuers, Herron Todd White recently released their December report which shows on the Property Clock that Sydney's housing market has now gone through the bottom of the market and is now in the Start of Recovery phase which sits at around 7 to 8 o'clock on the Property Clock.

We have experienced a dramatic increase in buyer enquiry for acreage properties in recent weeks and there's been some very active competition between buyers during a number of our most recent sales.

Also, I have just had another property go under contract without even making it to the market, plus, I've recently trialled an exclusive, Social Media and Acreage Database only pre-launch strategy for a new acreage listing at Annangrove.

We've had several enquiries from buyers already, along with a number of inspections and contracts issued. It looks like this property may also get Sold without making it onto the major real estate websites.

It's incredible to see how effective a highly-targeted Social Media strategy can attract so many extra buyers in today's market.

If you'd like to know more about how this brand new Off-Market selling strategy works, please feel free to contact me.

Along with the excellent growth anticipated for 2020 in the acreage sector, I have some exciting news in store for acreage owners including a brand new suite of property marketing strategies that I will be rolling out in the New Year.

In the meantime, if you're considering selling your acreage property and would like to know how much your property is worth and how to maximise its value please don't hesitate to get in contact with me.

Thanks for tuning into the Acreage Market Wrap, I look forward to catching up with you again soon.

Regards

Greg Vincent