The current ‘city road wedge’ in South Melbourne (convention centre precinct) will undergo a transformation. There will be an integrated development consisting of retail mall, residential buildings and 1 international hotel and they will be built over a 5-year period.

A tram stop along Whiteman Street beside this development has been proposed to the council be built to provide better accessibility to this new development. Approval will be made known at a later stage.

The first of 3 residential buildings to be released is a 39-storey building right at the corner of city road and cecil street.

Key highlights are summarized below:

• Rare integrated mixed-use development (3 levels of retail mall and shops, 3 residential buildings and 1 International Hotel)
• Iconic development in the Convention Centre Precinct
• Big ratios of units with carparks
• Less than 1km to Melbourne CBD
• Less than 50m to Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
• Proposed tram stop to the council along Whiteman road for future residents
• Pre-release at prices below current market rate (*based on comparison with closest new project launched)
• South Melbourne – An international address and a major activity center under the metropolitan strategy, Melbourne 2030
• Proven capital growth and great rental yield area for investors (Data from residex Dec 09 issue showed 8.33% p.a. growth for capital growth and 5.14% p.a. for rental yield growth for the last 10 years)

Prices start from:

• 1-bedroom apartment (from $420,000* with 1 carpark)
• 2-bedroom apartment (from $550,000* with 1 carpark)
• Off-the-plan purchase (only 10% deposit required)
• Settlement in 2013

*Pre-release prices, prices are subject to change without notification from vendor

Rental Potential

Rental yield is estimated to be in the region of 5% or more currently. The vacancy rate in inner city suburbs is below 1% (3% to be considered market balance). According to the population census by City of Port Philip, it is projected that the number of residents will increase to 96,110 with an increase of 2,125 in the year 2009. Howver the number of approved dwellings between 2008-2009 is 705 and that will take between 18-24 months to be completed. With a family size of 2.1 (latest statistics by ABS on household size) there’s still a shortage of accommodation within this area. That will pressure on rentals and cause the rentals to rise.

Capital growth potential

Investors will be pleased to know that South Melbourne has been earmarked as a major activity centre to be developed under the Melbourne 2030 Plan. What it means is that the area will be developed over the next two decade as focal points for services with increased residential densities, employment opportunities as well as cultural and community services.
As businesses move and relocate to the already thriving Clarendon street spine filled with commercial and retail outlets, South Melbourne’s transportation network will be enhanced along with conservation of heritage listed sites (which limits the supply of new residential properties) to give this suburb a unique character and identity. Along with parklands and good schools, it is a desirable place to live for both investors as well as owner-occupiers.
Highlights

•    Completion expected in 2013 with maximum stamp duty savings for off-the-plan purchasers now.
•    Freehold and available to all residents as well as non-residents
•    Loan available up to 80% of the value of the property (AUD loan)
•    Foreign currency financing options available (subject to lending criteria from Australian banks)
•    Most competitive property management fee in Australia (62% off retail property management fees)
•    Early purchasers guaranteed capital growth (higher-priced apartments to be released in later stages)

Feel free to drop me an email if you have any queries.
Have a good weekend ahead!

The latest changes in policies by the Singapore government where even private property owners in Singapore can only take up a maximum of 70% loan-to-value ratio for their subsequent acquisition in Singapore (only private properties are allowed) will effectively deter many serious investors from buying in their own country. The basis for property investment is to have minimum outlay, maximum leverage, and use rental income to defray interest costs and expenses for capital gains. Imagine having to cough out $300,000 plus stamp duties and other purchase costs to effectively acquire a property worth S$1,000,000(in prime areas), it’s a serious sum of money for most people.

Serious investors might be far better off investing in areas where rental income is very consistent (and rising every year) and there’s a huge pool of tenants locally(locals as well as PRs and foreigners) to minimize investors’ risk (holding costs).

Some investors asked me, ‘what can you do with S$300,000?’

You effectively buy three (yes, not just one) investment properties in Australia and you will have three tenants instead of just one if you invest in Singapore. The quantum for investment will be smaller and it will be spread among 3 properties with different capital growth rates and most importantly investors’ risks will be significantly lowered (Risk – holding cost).  One thing to note, Aussie banks do take into account rental income (a big part of rental income) to boost investors’ borrowing capacity. There’s indeed some truth to the saying ‘the world is an oyster’. Serious property investors should know property investment is not limited by geographical boundaries; the only question is who you should approach for the right expertise and advice.

2-bedroom apartments from A$455,250(99 sqm)
I am pleased to introduce a pre-release of a fantastic project in Maribyrnong, one of the fastest growing suburbs, 6km NW of the Melbourne CBD.

This is an excellent project with great views to the marina and the Melbourne CBD from the apartments. Prices start from $5,900/sqm and settlement is expected in 2013. You wouldn’t want to miss buying in one of the fastest growing inner-city suburb. Most locations that close to the CBD wouldn’t have spacious apartments like this one. We have a special pre-public release allocation of apartments. This project is priced to sell! We expect that once this project releases publicly it will sell extremely quickly.

Overview
Situated within 6km of the Melbourne CBD, Marina apartments offer investors a unique opportunity to acquire a piece of real estate (250m to the marina) next to one of Australia’s largest shopping centre and vibrant commercial facilities along the Rosamond road (thru highpoint shopping centre) and near to Docklands. The development is 1km to Victoria University (5 mins), 4km to RMIT University (CBD) (12mins), 3km to University of Melbourne (10mins) and Royal Melbourne Hospital, public transport, shops, restaurants and cafes in Highpoint Shopping Centre and not to mention recreational activities around the parklands and the Maribyrnong Aquatic Centre just next to Highpoint Shopping Centre. Commuting to the city takes only 15 minutes by tram. The tram services are available along Gordon Street.

The project comprises two buildings merged together and it’s also located on a sloping site hence the units on the higher ground have fantastic views towards the marina and the city. All units come with car parks (3-bedders with 2 car parks) and some with storage spaces. There’s no swimming pool or gym hence body corporate fees are kept relatively low.

Location
Edgewater Boulevard, Maribyrnong, Victoria

* 100m from Gordon Street trams
* 200m from Les Ames Deli Cafe
* 300m from Edgewater Marina
* 700m from Essendon Municipal Golf Course
* 800m from Maribyrnong Secondary College
* 1.0km from Highpoint Shopping Centre
* 1.0km from Rosamond School
* 1.0km from Footscray North Primary School
* 1.0km from Progress Kindergarten
* 1.1km from Flemington Race Course
* 1.5km from Gilmore College for Girls
* 1.5km from Footscray Primary School
* 1.2km from Western Hospital
* 6km from Melbourne CBD

Estimated Completion Date: Late 2012 to early 2013

Please email me if you are interested to find out more about the project.

If you are after an investment property with an owner-occupied finish coupled with rare water views, this is the unit you have to go for. Construction will commence as soon as the land settles in 45 days’ time and the expected completion date will be some time in May 2010. It’s a 5-stage progressive draw down for the construction and foreigners with sufficient income serviceability can get up to 80% financing (only standard construction loans available) for the entire land and construction package.

The unit is priced in the low $400K with latest valuation report by bank panel valuers. The great thing is I can show you how you can finance this property such that it will yield positive cashflow at completion next year. It’s a relatively reasonable purchase if you are looking for something with great future capital growth potential. When I visited the place in May 2010, they have started moving the earth for the development of the town centre nearby this project. For more information, you may email me directly.

If there’s one development you have to get into this year, Trilogi in high street, Prahran is the one!

When I was in melbourne two weeks ago, I had the chance to visit the site in 201-209 High street. This project is in an absolutely superb location. It’s right next door to the famous Chapel street in Prahran and it has trams along the High street as well as Chapel street. Travelling along high street heading westwards, turning right along St. Kilda road and in 5 minutes you will be in the Melbourne CBD. Its accessibility is fantastic and being in the City of Stonnington, the abundance of schools around it means that it’s an inner city suburb that will appeal not just to single professionals but also to families who wants a piece of inner-city action.

The following are Secondary colleges (High schools) in the City of Stonnington:

• De La Salle College, Malvern;
• St Kevin’s College, Toorak;
• The King David School, Armadale;
• Korowa Anglican Girls’ School, Glen Iris;
• Lauriston Girls’ School, Armadale;
• Loreto Mandeville Hall, Toorak;
• Presentation College, Windsor;
• Sacré Coeur School, Glen Iris;
• St Catherine’s School, Toorak;
• Melbourne High School, South Yarra.

Higher education is provided by Universities, Vocational Education and Training (VET) facilities and Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions. Swinburne University has a campus in Glenferrie Road, Malvern and its Prahran campus in High Street.

The shopping street Chapel Street is a mix of upscale fashion shops and cafes. Along with the South Yarra section of Toorak Road, it is a fashionable magnet for Melbourne’s upscale set. Greville Street, has many cafés, bars, restaurants, bookstores, clothing shops and music shops.

Prahran Market is the oldest continuously running Market in Australia, known as “the food lovers market” because of the quality and range of the food.

Prahran features many small gardens scattered throughout the suburb. “Grattan Gardens” are off Greville Street on Grattan Street. The Princes Gardens are a small garden which features the “Chapel Off Chapel”, an old church converted into a theatre, as well as the Prahran skate park, home to the best vert skateboarding facilities in Victoria. Victoria Gardens off High Street is a Victorian era garden with a main space consisting of a
circular row of London plane trees and an angel statue. The Orrong Romanis Park is the largest park in Prahran.

Consisting of both 1 and 2-bedders with car space, this would be a fantastic investment property to add to your personal portfolio.
Construction work will start in early 2011 and is expected to complete by 2013.

We have a small window of opportunity for pre-public release now for clients in my database. If you wish to know more about this development, all you have to do is to email me with your contact details and I will get back to you within 48 hours.

I just came back from a 10-day work trip to Melbourne. One of the highlights of this trip must be the visit to the site of Alexander Lombard Tower (ALT) at Mount Alexander Road, Travancore. I deliberately took tram No.59 from Elizabeth Street and along the way, the tram went past Royal Melbourne Hospital, University of Melbourne, Queen Victoria Market, etc to reach the development at Mount Alexander road.

The tram stopped in front of the site earmarked for ALT. I snapped some pictures of the SiennaApartments which is stage 2 of Travancore On the Park and the apartments have been sold and are scheduled for settlement at August/Septemeber 2010.

If you haven’t been to the site, you would have NO clue how the layout of the apartments of ALT will be like. All marketing materials and brochures do not state indicate the orientation of the units. I have taken a shot of the model at its showroom below Travancore On the Park stage 1 to give you an indication of the facing of the units.

Having said that, there are some very good valued units (priced at below $8,000/sqm) and facing the park view. If you buy with the right price, your yield would be optimized.

Personally, I feel that this development offers great value to investors. Many developments off-the-plan within 5km of the CBD are asking for sky-high prices (very often $10,000/sqm) but ALT is right up there in terms of location, quality and also value for money.

This development would suit investors who are looking for a second investment property with a 24-month settlement period. With multi-award winning Fender Katsalidis Architects, you can be sure your return on your investment is maximized. The development features mainly 2-bedroom units and it appeals to professionals working in the city and also the airport. There’s a growing number of people working in the airport who wants to live close to the city. Hence ALT is the natural choice. The other upside is there are not many developments coming up in this area (Travancore) hence supply is definitely limited.

If you want a piece of inner city apartment without paying through your nose, ALT is the one. Of course, you need to know what your objectives of investing are and it’s best to find out your borrowing capacity before taking the plunge. For more information, please email me for a no-obligation discussion.

There’s an upcoming project in inner city Melbourne. It will be located on 17-21 Harcourts Parade, Cremorne; a suburb 2km SE of Melbourne CBD. Located by the riverside, this 11-level building boasts 182 apartments with both river and CBD aspects. It also has extensive podium facilities consisting of a gym, recreational garden and also a theatre. Secure undercover car parks and storage are available for residents and there’s an additional benefit of a live-in building manager for ease of maintenance.

If you look the site for the development, you will find the units facing the river to be just in front of a 4-lane freeway. Yes, that’s monash freeway(M1) and to add to that ‘congestion’, there’s the Harcourts parade lane, making it 5 lanes in front of the development.

But all’s not that bad. I learnt that the developers are building winter gardens for all the balconies for units facing the river/freeway. In case, you haven’t heard of winter gardens (like myself), it’s a balcony with glass to the top of the ceiling and double glazed. That provides the first level of sound attenuation. The entrance to the balcony from the living areas will have glass doors that are double-glazed as well. So imagine yourself, sitting in the living room, watching television or listening to Norah Jones after a days’ work. All you could hear is the music and the 2-level of sound attenuation will virtually block out 99% of the noise.

Last year, I stayed in my business partner’s apartment at 80 Lorimer Street (one of the developments by Mirvac). The bedroom I was putting up faced a 8-lane freeway (west gate freeway) and there wasn’t any barriers in between. So the room was exposed to the high traffic flow during peak hours. The irony was that it was so quiet with the double-glazed windows that there was hardly any noise. And for your information, the apartment was on the 11th floor!

Overseas buyers will be limited to only a small percentage of the buyers due to banks’ lending policies now. The indicative prices* are as such:
1-bedroom from $385,000*
2-bedroom from $490,000*
2 bedroom plus study from $750,000* onwards

This development would be ideal for investors as their 2nd or 3rd investment property as it’s off-the-plan. More details will be posted once I have them. To indicate your interest, just indicate your name, tel and email me at info @ pagreal.com(without spaces).

In an internet report by domain.com.au, the median price of apartments in the last 12 months to October 2009 is $432,000 and a long tend trend of 6.7% growth per annum.

Ranked one of the most liveable suburbs in Victoria, South Yarra has outperformed many other suburbs within the 4km radius as the ‘preferred suburb’ to live in for professionals in Melbourne. In a report published on the 20th August 2005 to rank suburbs in Melbourne, fourteen indicators, from crime to entertainment, were used to rank each area, writes Martin Boulton.

According to Melbourne 2030 — the State Government’s strategy for accommodating an extra million people in Melbourne in the next 25 years — sustainable housing, shops and access to services will shape the future of our suburbs.

But while affordable housing is the key factor in where people live, other factors including crime, access to schools, restaurants and entertainment help explain why people move to, or away from, a particular suburb.

The authors of the Liveable Melbourne report, commissioned by The Age, looked at the characteristics that help define our suburbs and developed 14 indicators to try to quantify what constitutes liveability.

“As you move around Melbourne, the ability of the place to provide all things that are important to people — shops, schools, parks — varies considerably,” said co-author Dr Daniel Terrill.

So how did each suburb perform across transport, proximity to the CBD and the coast, culture, traffic congestion, education, shopping, open space, tree cover, cafes and restaurants, topography and crime?

Raw data in the form of Australian Bureau of Statistics findings, crime figures, bus routes, etc was collected for the appropriate indicator and then collated to give each suburb a ranking from one to 314, with one being the highest ranking for each indicator. If a suburb had no crime at all, for example, it was judged the best performing suburb on the crime indicator, making it number one on the list of all 314 suburbs for that indicator.

Once each suburb had a ranking for each indicator, the ranking was converted into a score between zero (lowest) and five (highest) to produce a total indicator score. South Yarra, for example, scored a five on seven of the indicators, for a  total indicator score of 53.

The lower ranking suburbs were mostly on Melbourne’s outer-suburban fringe and scored poorly on most of the indicators, particularly access to public transport.

These included, in no particular order, Hallam, Sydenham, Lysterfield, Kilsyth South, Cranbourne North and Bayswater North. A condition of the survey was that suburbs outside the top 150 would not be ranked.

Terrill said it was “implicit in the scoring methodology” that each indicator had equal weighting in the total score.

“Liveability is a subjective term … but having decided upon the indicators the rest of the process has been highly objective,” he said.

Iain Butterworth, a senior lecturer in the School of Health and Social Development at Deakin University, welcomed the findings but said a liveability survey should ideally include an analysis of the social values built into those environments.

“Going ahead we need to build liveability into our suburbs,” he said.

“South Yarra is No.1 because it happens to be close to the city, is close to trams, trains, entertainment (and) wealthy people can afford to live there, but is it a healthy suburb?

“Just because Rosanna came in at 150 doesn’t mean it’s a less healthy place, or the people there care less about each other than a suburb ranked somewhere near the top.”

Vogue South Yarra apartments are positioned at the heart of Chapel Street, Melbourne’s
most stylish shopping, dining and entertainment precinct. VOGUE, a mixed-use development made up of both splendid shopping and residential apartments above it is set to be one of the most iconic tower in the prestigious suburb of South Yarra.

South Yarra needs no introduction. Chapel street is analogus to Orchard rd of Singapore with desirable lifestyle options. It’s a place where most of the young, high-income earners yearn to live in.

From an investment perspective, gross rental yield should be slightly higher than 5% for selected units(with carpark) and according to homepriceguide, the median price of units has grown by 7% between March 2009 and September 2009 and currently the median price of units in the suburb is $442,000.

Property managers have reported that units take roughly 3-6 days to be tenanted the moment an application is received from a prospective tenant, hence the vacancy period of units in this are is reduced dramatically.

Full specifications and cashflow analysis can be produced upon request. We don’t think the entire development suits investors but at least of handful of the units would do well from an investment perspective. Just drop me an email and we will take it off from there.

Have a awesome week ahead!

Australia’s central bank unexpectedly raised its benchmark interest rate from a 49-year low by a quarter percentage point amid signs the nation’s economy is strengthening. Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens increased the overnight cash rate target to 3.25 percent from 3 percent in Sydney yesterday.

Only one of 20 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News forecast today’s decision. The rest predicted no change. Australia is the first Group of 20 nation to raise borrowing costs since the start of the global financial crisis more than a year ago. Rising job vacancies, retail sales and house prices, plus surging business and consumer confidence support Stevens’ view the economy is accelerating enough to scrap the bank’s “emergency” rate setting.

“It makes sense for the Reserve Bank to start the tightening cycle at the earliest opportunity,” Stephen Walters, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Sydney, said ahead of today’s increase, which he forecast. There has recently been “a near uninterrupted stream of healthy economic data.”

Governor Stevens, who cut the benchmark lending rate by a record 4.25 percentage points between September 2008 and April to cushion the economy against fallout from the global credit squeeze, said on Sept. 28 that compared with past recessions, “this has been a good episode for Australia.”

“In due course, both fiscal and monetary support will need to be unwound as private demand increases,” Stevens told a Senate committee in Sydney.