Hi Paul,
Still within about a 15 min commute of work?

I read the whole site the last time you mentioned it.

He is a brave man given the hegemony the real estate associations seem to have on all things property-related in OZ.

Hi Steve

It takes me an hour here as we have just relocated offices to Osborne Park! So it would actually be a little better than I currently "enjoy"...



Cheers

Paul

QUOTE=steve99]Hi Paul,
Still within about a 15 min commute of work?[/QUOTE]

I'm surprised no one has paid to "take him out" yet. I reckon he must be a marked man. The do have a register of ethical "Jenman approved" estate agents you can use though. Lots of good resources on that site.

[/QUOTE]

Osborne park! nice, hope you built that into the equation when you agreed to extend! still you get to get a cheap sausage in a bun from Ikea at lunch now
Cheers
Steve
PS: how are you getting there, train/bus? I have a friend drive from Nth Freo to Balcatta and takes her less than 30mins up W.Coast Hwy.

Travel would be fine if we had a second car, unfortunately travelling by public transport across suburbs (as opposed to into City) is not easy! 20 minutes car journey is a 1 hour bus and walk!

Osborne park! nice, hope you built that into the equation when you agreed to extend! still you get to get a cheap sausage in a bun from Ikea at lunch now
Cheers
Steve
PS: how are you getting there, train/bus? I have a friend drive from Nth Freo to Balcatta and takes her less than 30mins up W.Coast Hwy.[/QUOTE]

House Prices? Crashing Markets? Booms? Resources?.......................ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

know what you mean , you spend half the time zigzagging across the map to get to where you need to.

Maybe you should check these guys out

http://www.scoota.com.au/ecycle_wa.html

St eve

Nearly killed myself on a scooter once, think maybe will look at getting a second car though!

Good news! Food prices are going up fast!

Great news! The price of cars is soaring!

Fantastic news! We're going to pay a lot more for travel!

Silly, isn't it? Yet that's what many people say about property - that price rises are good news. They are NOT. They may make the naive believe they are richer than they were before but it's only an illusion.

In the end it all boils down to what people on average can afford. One of the prime reasons the Oz property market is so sick is that buyers of "investment" properties have been piling in for years now, bouyed by tax breaks and the banks shovelling money at the market.

Just look at the near panic generated here when the interest rates went up .25% recently! In any sane market a tiny rise like that would have been a paragraph on page four, not a warning of the apocalypse.

Again, the reason that rents are so low is because "investment" property owners have been letting their units at rents which barely cover costs, because they "know" that they can sell at a huge profit in capital terms a couple of years down the road. It ain't necessarily so, and a lot of folk are going to discover this for themselves over the next five years - it's already happening. I see houses here up for sale at 30% less than they were 12 months ago -a lot of them. My own landlord is in default with his mortgage since February and owes the investment firm over $3m and we suspect that the latter is also in a bit of a spot with regards to their own sources.

It hasn't even started yet!

Predicting property prices is like gambling on horses... you might know all the facts and the form but can still lose out dramatically. I got caught in the 1989 crash in London, everyone still wanted to buy a house and demand was high but confidence in the market plumeted because houses were over valued, stamp duty was reduced and there were lots of people warnign of doom. So i am not sure that demand is the only factor, confidence in the market is important and the more articles like this that get printed the lower that will be.. stories of negative equity will scare away investors who might invest elsewhere...
having said that i still think pricers will just fall slightly initially and then stabilise, there alrready seems to be a slight reduction in the prices on the internet sites.

Cheers

Before we came over we were renting a 3-bedroom house in East Sheen - a "nice" suburb in London. We were paying 1400UKP a month rent, the fully-renovated house next door sold for 420,000UKP. Here we pay $1800 a month for a 3 bedroom house in Subi - a "nice" suburb in Perth, the run-down house two doors down has just sold for $1.4 million. Something is wrong

People forget that although there may be 40000 migrants arriving in Perth next year, they will all (or nearly all) find the houses just as expensive as those already here.

They can't pay the prices if they can't afford them - no matter how many people arrive every week.

And the more they hear about an impending crash or an over heated market the more they will wait, thereby reducing the demand... no one wants to be in that group of people that bought at the 'wrong time'. It also seems from that from one of the previous posts the disparity between renting and buying favours those who rent...7 months ago i certainly wanted to buy as soon as i planned to arrive, now though i will certainly rent and bide my time.

The lack of movement from DIMI must have something to do with the slowdown. Their re-org has ground the issue of non emloyer sponsored visas to a halt.

It may pick up again when they get back to work!!