Apartment Choice

From July 1, NSW doubled the stamp duty on foreign buyers to 8 per cent. THERE are nascent signs Chinese foreign buyers have toned down their enthusiastic buying of Sydney property . There are three pinpointed causes. Firstly, Beijing has narrowed the window for capital outflows to Australia. At the same time, Australian banks have tightened lending criteria to mainland China investors due to APRA regulatory requirements , and in some cases won’t lend to foreign investors at all. This week Chinese local and international estate agents reported a sharp drop-off in sales over the last six weeks as new property taxes took effect after the NSW state budget . From July 1, NSW doubled the stamp duty on foreign buyers to 8 per cent and increased the land tax surcharge from 0.75 per cent to 2 per cent. Chinese local and international estate agents reported a sharp drop-off in sales over the last six weeks. It’s a little too early to say the allure of Australian property has gone, b...

This article is the first in a series based on new research into the place of lower-income and disadvantaged households in a compact city. There’s been a lot of talk about apartment living of late. Whether it’s millennials who can’t afford to buy a house, downsizers making a lifestyle change, owner-occupiers struggling to get defective buildings fixed , or foreign investors buying into new development, there’s no shortage of opinions and interest. Except for one group: lower-income and vulnerable residents . In Greater Sydney, the latest census data show that almost one in five households (17%) living in apartments and townhouses have weekly household incomes of less than A$649. Among this group the largest sub-group (36%) live in private rental housing . That’s more than 72,000 households living on $649 or less per week in a housing market where average weekly rents for apartments are $550. Our research for Shelter NSW identifies multiple challenges such households face. Further...

In about 10 years, the docks at the Port of Anchorage will start closing, crippled by corrosion, unless major repairs are made. But with the clock ticking, it's still unclear who will pay for it, and how. Without a big injection of state or federal funding, officials say the port, which opened in 1961, is more likely to resort to a tariff that leads to higher prices on the vast majority of consumer products that come into the state. That means everyone would pay a little more for a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, a car or a sheet of plywood. A scary incident at the port earlier this summer accentuated warnings about its condition. At 7 a.m. June 26, the Holland America cruise ship MS Amsterdam docked at the port. Waves kicked up by the ship while it was docking broke the severely corroded underwater base of two columns holding up the port — causing a 57,000- pound dock fender to break off and sink into the adjacent berth. Corroded metal pipes , part of a fender ...

The long retail spine of Sydney Road, Brunswick, just north of Melbourne's CBD, was once a prosperous trading outpost on the way to the goldfields. These days it's a bohemian mix of variety stores, op shops, halal butchers and Lebanese bakeries. Take a side street to the west, however, and a different picture emerges. Sandwiched between Sydney Road and the Upfield train line is an area undergoing rapid and widespread transformation. Light industry is fast being replaced by mid- rise apartment buildings , their inhabitants attracted by the short commute into town and cheaper prices than in the city's south-east. The quality of these units is, on the whole, depressingly bad; think poor ventilation and bedrooms that "borrow" natural light (a weasel word for being dark and windowless). The occasional jazzy façade tries feebly to make up for otherwise cheap construction amid a chorus of greys. At ground level, carpark roller doors alternate with mean pocket garden...

A busy intersection in Shaker Heights is being transformed through the redevelopment of the Warrensville- Van Aken business district . The former Van Aken Center will connect with nearby Shaker Plaza to create the Van Aken District , a new downtown and community- gathering place for the city. Phase one of the $97.2 million project, under construction near the intersection of Warrensville Center Road and Van Aken and Chagrin boulevards, is due to be completed next summer. “There really has been nothing like this in Shaker Heights,” said Jack Bialosky Jr ., senior and managing principal of Bialosky Cleveland, the architectural firm responsible for planning the project and designing most of the buildings in phase one. “It’s a mixed-use, urban development which will really provide public space for the community, all organized around a central triangular park . “It’s going to be a place where the community can come, shop, dine and recreate. It will be a beautifully scaled, contained s...

(Sea view from the private rooftop pool of a six-bedroom penthouse at Cape Royale in Sentosa Cove. Photo: Ho Bee Land) Expensive as they may be, the new generation of penthouses on sale here are gaining a lot of traction with property buyers. But just how much does a penthouse cost today and what are the attractions to living in one? Over in prime district 10, Sun Tongyu, co-founder of Alibaba, paid $51 million for the sole penthouse spread across 13,573 square feet on the top two levels of Wing Tai's freehold Le Nouvel Ardmore two years ago - the biggest amount paid for a penthouse in Singapore at the time. SC Global Developments recently smashed that record when it sold the 10, 300 sq ft super penthouse at Sculptura Ardmore for more than S$60 million or in excess of S$6,000 per square foot. The luxury residential developer could set another record when it finds a buyer for the 17, 642 sq ft penthouse on the top three levels - 23, 24 and 25 - in the Signature Tower at Th...

A decade after the crash, Shannon Valley housing estate , on the outskirts of Ballaghaderreen, in Co Roscommon, remains unfinished and partly in ruins. Although the number of “ unfinished housing developments ” has fallen sharply since 2010, Shannon Valley is one of hundreds that still dot the country. The Guls: ‘Every day I put rats in the bin’ Fatima Gul says her little brother, Yousaf, doesn’t like the rats. He jumps up on the sofa or the table in the living room when they come into the house. Their parents don’t allow Fatimar, who is 10, or her nine-year-old sister, Maryam, or Yousaf and his twin, Zohra, who are five, to play near the houses on the other side of their green. It’s too close to the rats and the rubble. Shannon Valley “ ghost estate ” outside Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon. Photograph: Simon Carswell" height="349" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.3181475!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_620/image.jpg" width="620...