IvanM

I did a realestate search on Castle Hill. Over 200 results and many with the following lines

Express sale
Desperate
Motivated sellers

I have never seen anything like it and this is meant to be the big spring selling time.

DrWho

A lot of construction work has died in the arse here... There's a biggish electrical contractor near us (35 blokes on the tools) and they're struggling to find work... several jobs either postponed or cancelled... One of our builders puts the blame squarely on the state Government for the stupidly high costs of building new here compared to Melbourne where he reckons it's booming...

IvanM

The "infrastructure taxes" are just taxes that hit building and built none of the infrastructure that the new areas need. Now no one can finance a new project which will hit you guys hard. Sydney desperately needs new rail lines to these areas to make them viable places to commute from.

Centurion

I know some trades in Brisbane facing the same. What I think it essentially comes down to is that people are very unsure as to what is happening in terms of interest rates, the global recession and so on. This is leading to a lack of anyone willing to buy.

A friend of mine is a very successful Remax agent. Not sold one house last month.

We may like to think of ourselves as more insulated in terms of the actual financial effect on banks and so on, and we are to a degree, but what we are not insulated against is people generally fearing the worst and choosing not to financially commit themselves or simply staying where they are.

IvanM

Basically the arse has fallen out of the non banking lending market as their source of money has dried up. Banks have taken up some of the slack but they have tighter lending criteria. The result is that there is less money out there chasing the property. I had approval with Virgin Money but they cocked up and the approval lapsed. They now have no money to lend. I do have another approval now.

Basically 100% mortgages and low doc loans are becoming very hard to get. Banks are also now valuing properties more stringently and often not approving loans on the basis the properties are over valued.

The financial insulation Australia has is due to the commodities boom. That is now over as China is having to cool its rampant inflation. Hopefully China will remain steady as it is the only thing stopping Australia going the way of the US and UK.

The uncertainty just means even less demand and people are less willing to move. This means less houses on the market for the agents to sell.

carolinephillips

Depends where you are in Sydney- north shore prices are still going up.
Caroline

IvanM

Lower North Shore for the moment. Other areas have gone into a frozen state with much lower volumes. Remember that past performance is not an indicator of future performance. Have a look at the long term property price curves and at the moment prices are well above the long term trend.

ozbaz

...which isn't entirely bad news for those of us who have to drop house selling price again and again....
I've been following real estate in outer West Sydney and the same houses have been for sale for the last 4 months. Some of which have dropped by AU$ 5-10.000. It makes me feel better about selling here ....
Not such good news when jobs are hit, too, and I feel for those who are employed in the building industry, hopefully things will level out again sometime in the future.

Hotton

Parts of Sydney are immune to any property slump ,its when
you venture out west that the overvalued properties seem to be
going down the pan, people even in the hills Baulkham etc are still trying
for half a mill for houses ,thay have to be joking the IMF are right
who pays $A600000 for a wooden shed in Thornleigh totaly overvalued
property. its only a matter of time until the banks pull the plug
lending for shacks in popular areas and land value

IvanM

Those houses marked as land value make me laugh - especially when you see that an empty piece of land goes for several hundred thousand less. I have agents from Thornleigh desperate to get me move into the area.

Nowhere is immune from the slump and Australia is only now starting to feel the bite.

ozbaz

>>and I feel for those who are employed in the building industry, hopefully >>things will level out again sometime in the future.

This is Mr Ozbaz here and I don't feel sorry for anybody employed in the building industry...it goes with the territory...they make their hay when the sun shines and lots of it (teenagers making Euro 1000.00 a week in Dublin at the height of it) and yahoos running around Donegal in expensive 4x4's and flashy pick-up trucks...couldn't care less about them as they've milked as much as they could out of the so called Celtic (Brussels) Tiger..........Tough.

Mr Ozbaz

IvanM

The Aussie dollar just dropped 10%. The high dollar was insulating Australia from the worst of the inflation knocking elsewhere. That is now gone. Commodity prices are coming down and those exports were funding the tax cuts and govt spending increases over the last few years. The share prices of the company I work for has been savaged and it is linked to the so called commodities super cycle. The talk here is now of cost cuts.