epro Newsletter
Lest we forget...
... as we celebrate Anzac Day and enjoy the Long Weekend. In property news this week, a bushfire-proof house beats the heat; and the lengths some go to when speaking their mind…
Where the affordable houses are
The good news is there is still affordable housing in Australia. The bad news is that the suburbs are a short flight away from capital city centres. Take for instance, Millgrove in Victoria. The median price for a home in that suburb is a relatively modest $218,500 with values rising 1.2% in the year to January. Millgrove, in the state's Yarra Ranges, is 61 kilometres from Melbourne's CBD. In Sydney the most affordable suburb is Willmot with a median home price of $219,500. It's a mere 41 kilometres to the CBD, but prices have risen 9.8% in the year to January. Hillman is 38 kilometres from Perth's city centre and is the most reasonably priced suburb in Western Australia with a median price of $280,000. Hobart's far flung northern suburb of Gagebrook is the cheapest capital city suburb in the nation with a median price of $153,000. It's 16 kilometres north of the Hobart's CBD and separated from it by the Derwent River. Home prices in the Brisbane suburb of Lamb Island - which is accessible only by boat - has a median value of $205,000. Prices there have dropped 3.5% over the past 12 months. In addition to being serviced only by ferries, Lamb Island is 39 kilometres from Brisbane's CBD. The cheapest suburb in the ACT, Charnwood, is only 13 kilometres from Canberra's CBD. The median price is $351,000. The Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth South offers homes at a median price of $200,000, at only 21 kilometres from the CBD. Prices have increased 4.2% in the 12 months to January.
Land prices continue to rise
The cost of residential land continues to rise with a new report showing the median price of raw land increased by 2.2 per cent to a record $185,222 in the December 2009 quarter.
The latest residential land report from building industry organisation HIA and property information and analytics provider rpdata.com, highlights the risk of the new home building recovery losing momentum from the second half of 2010.
The 'bushfire-proof' house
A brand new house was torched this week - and survived to tell its own story to scientists conducting research into bush-fire resistant housing.
CSIRO scientists `flame-tested' the steel-framed house near Mogo on the NSW south coast to see how the structure could withstand realistic bushfire conditions.
New home building down
The amount of work done on building new homes fell in the December 2009 quarter, according to figures released this week by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The estimate of the value of new residential work done (seasonally adjusted) fell 2.5% to $8,833.5m.
The prophet to the mountain
An Australian Professor of Economics has a long walk ahead of him after losing a bet that housing prices will plummet.
Making a losing bet that house prices would crash last year, Steven Keen now has to walk from Parliament House in Canberra to Mount Kosciuszko in the Snowy Mountains, wearing a t-shirt with the slogan "I was hopelessly wrong on house prices, ask me how", the ABC reports.
Fill me up muffin cup
Some waste may continue to be unavoidable in our modern lives; however there are lots of ways to clean up while being sweet to the environment. The Fabriano Bin is one such way, incorporating the beauty of pleated-paper muffin cups with waste management.
Created for Milan's Design Week 2009 and made entirely of recycled paper, the bin consists of 50 thin disposable bags that can be pulled out and thrown away when full.
Lord of the Houses
Many of us would love to be able to build our dream home in our spare time - but then it would also be good to live in it, once it's finished.
That's not going to happen for Lord of the Rings devotee Maddie Chambers, however. The UK Telegraph reports she has spent the past year building a 3 sq ft model of Frodo Baggins's house, making everything by hand, from the portraits on the walls to the household furniture and vegetable patch in the garden.