US Figures Revive the Market

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the sharemarket broke a four day losing streak yesterday, to end the week on a positive note, after the US released figures showing its economy has returned to growth!

Sold a house in Denistone!

Carmel Stewart of Ray White Beecroft sold a property in Chatham Road, Denistone, at auction last Saturday. She was given the listing by a satisfied client, and she found the buyer through our extensive client data base.

WIRES Training Worthwhile

Guess what, at 1pm on Monday, less than 24 hours after finishing my WIRES course, a lady came into the Ray White Beecroft office to ask if anyone had a ladder! A fledgling bird had fallen out of its nest nearby and was hanging by one leg! Although I am not yet accredited I reckoned I could handle this, got a ladder, released the bird, calmed it down, and put it back in the nest along with a second chick who fell out in all the excitement. Now we wait to see if mom returns, and whether the trapped chick's tangled leg is okay.



(Yes she did! See pic!)

WIRES Training

After rescuing the five stranded ducklings last week, I did the WIRES basic rescuer course over the weekend and discovered how much I had done wrong for the little things! If you find yourself faced with distressed animals of any kind, remember the basic is Warm Dark Quiet - not at all what we did! The ducklings looked cute strutting around the Ray White Beecroft office, but the main objective of WIRES is to return native animals to the wild, and it is essential to avoid them becoming fixated on humans. Keep them in a box, put a hot water bottle or lamp under or beside the box for warmth, cover the box with a towel so they cannot see any light, and don't keep peeking at them to see if they are happy. Hey, that's just the start of it, if you want to learn more join WIRES!

Hugely successful auction

There was a huge turnout for Ray White Beecroft's recent Sale by Auction in Albert Road, about 80 people there and 15 registered bidders. A long standing customer of Ray White Beecroft, Mr Naga Nagarajah, a mortgage broker from Aussie, provided a mobile coffee van dispensing free coffee, which was very welcome.
Bidding was fierce and the final bid of $999,000 was just under $100,000 above the reserve.

Ducklings all part of Property Management

Early yesterday a Ray White Beecroft tenant phoned to say they had found five tiny ducklings with no mom, and had put them in a box in their garage and were heading off to work, would we please deal with it. I collected the box and phoned WIRES but they couldn't take them from me until the evening. So five ducklings spent their day in the Ray White Beecroft office! We got them warm, fed them bread and milk (apparently the milk bit is wrong, water is better) and fell in love!
Handing them over to WIRES was heartbreaking, and the WIRES man said, you mustn't get attached to them because sometimes they die. I looked at the angelic little faces we had known all day and thought how could you not get attached to them.
Anyway I have signed on to do the WIRES training course this weekend so next time I might be able to keep them!

Another Property Sold Before Auction

Ray White Beecroft is pleased to announce the sale of 54 Chapman Avenue two weeks before the scheduled auction.

Ray White corporate policy is to encourage vendors to go to auction, for many reasons including because the auction is the best way for the vendor to determine market interest in the property, and to put pressure on prospective buyers.

In the Beecroft and Cheltenham areas buyers are often reluctant to put their hands up during the actual bidding. Even so Douglas Macarthur, Ray White Beecroft Property Sales Director, strongly supports the corporate policy. Not long ago RWB had three properties scheduled for auction on the same day. One of these sold prior to auction, the other two were passed in. But one of those two sold that evening, while still under auction rules, and the other sold a week later to a bidder at the auction.

One benefit for the vendor in opting for Sale by Auction is that there is no need to be swayed by the ambitious promises of unscrupulous estate agents. Asking too much in a sale by private treaty wastes the key selling time, when the property first goes on the market. Buyers lose interest before the vendor gives in and drops the price, and the final sale price will often be well below what could have been obtained either by asking a realistic price, or simply saying "We are selling by auction, you tell us what you think the property is worth".

Where are Interest Rates Going?

Weekend Australian Financial Review contains an article on this that seems to make a lot of sense. "The Reserve Bank of Australia is unlikely to waste much time lifting interest rates from their current emergency levels and driving them up towards 5 per cent."
It says this 4% level could be reached "in the next twelve months", and that this level is broadly seen as neutral.
A bit more alarmingly for real estate investors is a later comment in the article that the RB governor Mr Stevens "might try to talk up interest rates as a way to head off the possibility of any property bubble developing".

Interest Rates on the way UP!

The Reserve Bank of Australia today raised interest rates by .25% to 3.25%, the first country to do so after the emergency reductions forced on the financial world in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Homes for Rent in Beecroft price increasing?

Several years ago Ray White Beecroft had quite a few properties for rent at prices in excess of $1000 a month, typically to senior executives of large companies over here on ex-pat contracts, with the company paying the rent. This market dried up almost completely a year ago as the financial crisis hit and companies stopped sending ex-pats. Many existing tenants negotiated reduced rents when their lease came due, recognising the lack of competition in that market.
So it was pleasing to note that RWB's Property Management department just rented a property within a week of it going on the market for just under $1000! So maybe this end of the market is getting up steam again!

Great Work the SES!

Sydney residents will remember this long weekend as being the rainy days between two beautiful sunny working weeks. For large property management departments like Ray White Beecroft, torrential rain always means problems, and rain at weekends normally means expensive callouts to reluctant tradespeople.
This weekend, as the rain teemed down on Saturday night Lydia's home phone rang, a tenant reporting cascading rain water flooding into their kitchen through the ceiling! Knowing how hard it would be to find a contractor able and willing to attend quickly, she advised the tenant to phone the State Emergency Service. The SES won't accept calls from a Real Estate agent, only the resident can ask for SES help.
Within the hour, and before Lydia had managed to find a contractor, the tenant rang back. The SES had attended, and had replaced a broken roof tile!!!
What incredible service! Well done, and thank you, all you great SES volunteers!

Big Ray White Commercial Sale in Beecroft

On Thursday last, Ray White Doublebay sold 5 Wangala Crescent, a large Beecroft commercial property, for $4.95 million.

Sydney house prices are rising

RPData says Sydney home sale values rose 8.6% in the first eight months of this year.

Ray White Tops of Google!

Internet users are searching for Ray White more than any other real estate group, a Google reporting tool has found.
The findings were revealed on real estate technology website Business2, who used Google Insights for Search to compare the relative brand strength of different real estate brands right around Australia.
“One way to measure a brand’s effectiveness is what the public are actually searching for,” author Glenn Batten wrote in his article Australian Real Estate Brands Compared.
“Google released a product a while back called Google Insights for Search which you can use to compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.”

Interest Rates

Until very recently most people were saying interest rates would not move up before Christmas. But increasingly there are signs that an earlier increase could happen. Economic figures released this week suggest the economy is continuing well even as the stimulus packages are being phased out. House and apartment prices have risen for the last eight months in a row. Retail sales rose nearly 1% in August. Alex Joiner of ANZ says that "high levels of confidence may be able to weather interest rate hikes".