Weekly Market Update 28th January 2016
By | 28th Jan 16

For many, Australia Day marks the end of their Summer Holidays, with many families returning back to the city from their holiday homes. The Herald Sun published an article last week about the ATO crackdown on holiday rentals. It appears many have been claiming deductions they are not entitled to and treating their property as an investment when it was only rented for a few weeks a year. 1.26 million people deducted losses made on investment properties from a total of 12.77 million individual tax payers and I am sure this crack down will affect many people, many of whom may not be fully aware of what they are legally entitled to claim. To read the full article, please CLICK HERE.

The REIV released the December Quarterly results for the Melbourne property market and the most important figure I think was the 8% annual growth for the housing market. The inner Melbourne housing market recorded a 17% increase while middle suburbs still recorded a healthy 13.2% increase. To view the full results, please CLICK HERE.

I was recently quoted in an article for the Herald Sun about the increase in million dollar suburbs in Melbourne. With suburbs such as Hampton East, Parkdale, Research, Brunswick East, Thornbury and Rosanna joining the coveted list which has increased from 85 to 92 in the last quarter. Although the REIV figures indicate that the Melbourne market has levelled off, I would still suggest it will not be long until we see more than a 100 million dollar suburbs recorded in Melbourne. Although our medium house price of $718,000 may seem high to many, compared to Sydney which has 305 million dollar suburbs and a medium house price over $1,050,000 we are still a much more affordable marketplace. As our population is due to surpass Sydneys by 2050 it can only be expected that our prices will continue to increase with this population growth. To read the full article, please CLICK HERE.

Be sure to watch Brant's video update on purchasing property with investment grade criteria.