Blackwood Sold at Auction

Carmel Stewart of Ray White Beecroft had a great turnout for the auction of the townhouse in Blackwood Close. Jason the auctioneer extracted 16 bids from the crowd, leading to a sale price of $770,000. Interestingly, the buyers are currently renting a property through Ray White Beecroft, so now that rental property will be up for new tenants!

Businesses of Beecroft First Meeting

Over forty people attended the inaugural meeting of Businesses of Beecroft, "BOB", in the Beecroft Bowling Club yesterday. As explained by Paul MacDonald, BOB is proposed as a way for all the many and varied businesses in the Beecroft precinct to get together to discuss issues and to propose how to promote and evolve the Beecroft Shopping Village.
The first item discussed was the Hornsby Shire Housing Strategy, which since December 09 has been proposing to list the entire Beecroft Shopping Village as zoned for five storey mixed commercial and residential development, with the objective of providing over 200 new dwellings by the year 2031.
Councilor Michael Hutchence gave an excellent presentation on the proposal, explaining that it is really too early to discuss the detail of the plan. A lot of additional documentation is still being prepared to cover parking, traffic, and other related issues, and that the full strategic plan will be available for viewing in mid March. He promised to liaise closely with BOB in the next few weeks.
Juan of Beehives provided a first class spread of food. Jean of Beautiful Things presentated a plan for an Easter Egg promotion for the village, and Lisa of Just for Him gave a closing address, after which many of the attendees retired to the bar.

Check Gutters UNDER the house too

One lesson from all the recent rain is that a lot of flooding was caused by storm water running into the house, typically through the garage, after passing over a drain grill like this one. I suspect a lot of occupants don't realise these grills contain a downpipe to take away flood water, just like the downpipes from your gutter. The second photograph shows that downpipe. If that isn't kept clear, then it won't take much to fill the trench and then water will enter your garage. Equally important, when it's raining heavily the flood water can sweep mud or leaves over the grill and block it so water floods straight into the garage.

Traffic Cameras

It's not related to real estate, but it affects Beecroft and Cheltenham residents, so let me just advise that two of the new "Red Light and Speed" cameras have been installed in Pennant Hills and Castle Hill. On a double demerit day, speeding through a red light with one of these cameras would cost you your licence in one hit!

Rentals around Beecroft are sizzling

Ray White Beecroft has had a most incredible start to the year with properties renting as fast as the department can list them. Sixteen properties were let in the first six weeks of the year! In the last week alone, applications have been received from New Zealand, Queensland and Melbourne.

Parking Issue central to Beecroft Development

The editor of this blog thinks one of the most important issues in the Housing Strategy's plans for Beecroft is that of parking, yet that seems to be largely ignored in the document.

Each 5-storey mixed use development will have one level of underground parking, which will presumably just serve the residents in the three or four residential levels, plus maybe some of the staff working in the lower retail levels. One assumes these will be private parking spaces, not available to the public. Will there be spaces there for visitors, even?

All this needs to be clearly explained before residents of Beecroft and Cheltenham can properly evaluate the proposal to authorise redevelopment of the Beecroft Village.

It seems likely that the Module and the adjacent car park could be the first area redeveloped, into 5 storey mixed residential units with no compensating arrangements for more car parking. Loss of the Module open air car park would, in my opinion, kill the village as a community centre, except for those who live in the flats above or who can walk to the village. Anyone who can drive would go to places with proper large public car parking under or beside the shops. With an estimated 488 new flat-dwelling residents, the life that so many in our community have grown to love would surely disappear.

We need much more information than seems to be available so far, and the proposed two week exhibition starting 1 March is just totally inadequate to enable the residents of Beecroft and Cheltenham to form an opinion for or against the proposal.

Civic Trust Polling Residents on Housing Strategy

The Beecroft and Cheltenham Civic Trust (BCCT) is polling Beecroft residents about the Hornsby Shire's Housing Strategy, and the recent addition of Beecroft Village to the areas proposed for major 5-storey redevelopment. The Trust's February bulletin includes a sophisticated survey, that can also be completed on-line at the Trust's website, http://www.2119.org.au./
The BCCT reports that council officers estimate the Beecroft Village redevelopment would yield 244 new dwellings, which implies they expect to have some 20 of their 5-storey blocks built between Chapman Road and the firestation.
The Draft Hornsby Housing Strategy will be placed on public exhibition from 1 March for a minimum of two weeks - which seems an appallingly short time for a document of such enormous long term consequence. BCCT has asked Council to provide an exhibition in the Beecroft Shopping Centre, which seems fair given that Beecroft residents were told last year that the Village would not be included in the proposal.

Cat Food solution to Cane Toads!

I listened to a delightful interview on the radio just now, about an environmentally sound control for cane toads. Sadly I didn't get the details of the person being interviewed, but Google came to the rescue, using the unlikely key word phrase above. And it turns out to be a Sydney scientist who is proposing the solution! Professor Rick Shine of University of Sydney says the technique has been tried up North and seems to work.
They have been putting scoops of tinned cat food by pools where cane toad tadpoles are maturing into baby frogs. Any local meat-eating ants swarm, and after finishing off the cat food they then eat the baby frogs! Nature at its very best! 80% of young cane toads encountering those native australian meat ants were killed.


That has to be better than relying on the niche Japanese market, who apparently use bufotenine (the active ingredient of cane toad poison) as an aphrodisiac and a hair restorer. An aphrodisiac? Kiss the cane toad???

Energy Efficiency Ratings are NOT NEEDED in NSW

One of Ray White Beecroft's tenants, trying to sell an investment property in Sydney, has been contacted by someone offering to conduct an Energy Efficiency Rating certificate for her house. Instead of just paying his charge and getting the certificate done, she phoned us, and we were able to tell her there is no requirement for such a certificate. They are only required in Queensland, and the ACT (and there has been a lot of very adverse comment on them in those places recently!).
So it looks as though there may be some dodgy confidence tricksters operating trying to persuade Sydney vendors to pay for these unnecessary EER documents.
Watch out, there's a crook about!

Rents in Outer Suburbs Rose 9.4%

Housing NSW reports that average rents for three bedroom houses in Sydney's outer suburbs rose by an average of 9.4% last year. Rents in inner Sydney suburbs rose by less than 2.3%. Inflation generally for the year has been recorded as 2.1%.
Housing NSW's figures are calculated based on rental bonds lodged, which of course takes no account of home improvements or new houses coming on stream.
Property developers claimed these rises showed the need to release more land for residential housing.

Come Back Nicole!

Ray White Beecroft's property office Nicole took three weeks leave, departing just before the recent floods and she is returning next Monday when the worst of the crisis is over!
Meanwhile Peter Hewitt, writer of this blog, has been looking out for her and learning all about home and contents insurance, storm water, roof repairs, carpets, and all sorts of new things!

Let us know your Property Insurance Details

The main problem with handling the rash of flooded houses around the Beecroft area over the last week has been getting insurance companies to approve repairs. The managing agent can only deal with the insurance company after the landlord has instructed the insurance company to do so. As a result days have been wasted emailing the owner to find out the policy details, then getting the owner to instruct the insurers, before we could act.
Sadly this has probably resulted in many carpets being unrecoverable by the time the insurance company authorised activity.
Of course that might be what the landlord wanted, nice new carpets! But it does involve long delays for tenants with large parts of the property uninhabitable.
Ray White Beecroft believes happy tenants are essential to landlord profits, so urges landlords to give us the policy details, and the authority, so we can act swiftly.

Another night of heavy rain

Parts of Sydney experienced 80mm of rain over Friday night, SES had 770 callouts, and people needed to be rescued from cars! Hornsby had 60 mm of rain in one hour!
Ray White Beecroft, having spent all last week dealing with flooded homes from last weekend, is now faced by more!

The Joys of Property Management

Over the weekend Sydney had over 100 mm of rain. Lydia Merrill, principal of Ray White Beecroft, was driving home on Friday night from the Edinburgh Tattoo at Sydney Football Stadium when the rain started, and she knew there would be problems! Sure enough the calls started early Saturday and continued remorselessly through the weekend. By Monday 19 of the properties under management by Ray White Beecroft had phoned in to report serious flooding problems!

Property Management Costs

Many investors prefer to manage their properties themselves to avoid the costs of a Property Management Department. It is therefore useful to compare the prices of different real estate agencies, and the latest edition of the Property Management Journal enables you to do that.
They conducted a survey of estate agents around Australia, receiving 828 responses. The results show that Ray White Beecroft matches the fees charged by most agencies.
Standard Management Fee
- Median figure 7.1% (318 respondents) - RWB charges 7%.
Standard Letting Fee
- Median 1 week rent (565 respondents) - RWB 1 week rent
Charge for tenancy renewals?
- No 414 respondents - RWB no.
Charge for postage and petties
- Median $5 per month - RWB $5 per month.
Charge for attending tribunals
- Median $50 to $60 per hour - RWB $50 per hour.
Of 13 other questions, eg charge for inspections, RWB answered "no fee".
In return for those fees, the Ray White Beecroft property management team provide services from supervising plumbing repairs to teaching new tenants how to manage their swimming pools. Fallen trees seems to be the in thing at the moment!!