Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
China developers’ bonds, shares hit again by Evergrande contagion worries
Andrew Galbraith The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)At 4.06pm: Shares and bonds of Chinese property companies fell further on Wednesday after China Evergrande Group missed a third round of interest payments on its dollar bonds in three weeks, and as others warned of defaults. In the clearest sign yet of global investors’ worries of spreading debt contagion ...
https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/asx-futures-higher-boq-r…
# International, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Low deposit boost helps first-timers jump on property ladder
John Collett The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)New figures show almost 33,000 first home buyers – about 10 per cent of the category’s demographic – have been helped to get a foot on the property ladder with federal government deposit assistance over the past two years.
https://www.smh.com.au/money/investing/low-deposit-boost-helps-f…
# Australia, Federal Government, Home ownership.China's property sector stalked by Evergrande default fears as developer misses third deadline
ABC (No paywall)Debt-saddled Chinese property firms took heavy fire in bond markets on Tuesday, after the poster child of the sector's woes, Evergrande Group, missed its third round of bond payments in as many weeks and others warned of defaults.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-13/china-property-sector-sta…
# International, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Mowbray renter struggles to afford winter energy bills without solar
Brinley Duggan (No paywall)The resident of a Mowbray community housing residence provided by the state government says more can be done to help reduce daunting electricity bills. Jean Crawford rents a two-bedroom unit in a complex at Mowbray and said she had been locked in a perpetual cycle of trying to keep herself healthy and abiding by her yearly budgeted cost for electricity. ... Ms Crawford recently overcame an ongoing battle to have rotted insulation in house replaced, and she said the simple energy saving solution had already been noticeable, but the installation of solar panels and subsequent reduction of her electricity bill, for example, would change her life. (The Examiner)
https://www.examiner.com.au/story/7461075/hard-to-buy-food-inves…
# Australia, Public and community housing.The lenders who pay mortgage insurance for you
Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)There is a new battleground in the bid to attract mortgage customers in a fiercely competitive home loan market: Covering the cost of Lenders’ Mortgage Insurance (LMI). LMI is payable on mortgages with a loan-to-valuation ratio (LVR) of more than 80 per cent, and can set a borrower back about $11,000 on a loan of $700,000 with an LVR of 87.5 per cent.
https://www.smh.com.au/money/borrowing/the-lenders-who-pay-mortg…
# Australia, Home ownership, Housing market.ACT law change possible after Canberra developer 3 Property Group rescinds more contracts for off-the-plan properties
Antoinette Radford, Elizabeth Byrne and Michael Inman ABC (No paywall)Sheridan Burnett purchased an off-the-plan apartment from 3 Property Group's Allegro development. The developer has now pulled out of the deal, leaving Ms Burnett and others like her angry at being left high and dry.
# Australia, Strata, Housing market.Evergrande’s rags-to-riches founder in race to save his empire
The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Four years after vying with Jack Ma for the title of Asia’s richest man, Evergrande chairman Hui Ka Yan’s fortune is plunging and his sprawling real estate empire is on the verge of collapse. It’s a stunning reversal for a man who fought his way from poverty in rural China to build one of the world’s largest property companies.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/evergrande-s-rags-to-r…
# International, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Tories’ manifesto pledge to build 300,000 houses a year now ‘almost impossible’
Michael Savage The Guardian (No paywall)Boris Johnson’s election pledge to build 300,000 new houses a year is in serious jeopardy in the face of labour and material shortages that are causing major disruption across the economy, industry figures have warned.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/oct/10/tories-manifesto…
# International, Home ownership, Housing market.