are you sure about flinders wharf?, I read an article in the paper some time ago reporting that agents Butler and co were trying to see around 70 apartments in that block and had only managed to sell 2 over a period of several months, I had assumed these couldn’t be sold before completion sounded like it was the developer trying to sell them.

Agree with Nat, I don’t think it is particularly concerning that someone should have negative equity in their property, apart from the risk to lenders if the defaulted.

note companies do not get the 50% discount on cgt.

that one was a local buyer, he was occupying it when it sold. From what I can see of it 20-25% losses are fairly common in southbank and docklands for those who bought of the plan in the last few years. I wouldn’t go as far as to say the market has fallen in those areas though, I think it more a case of people paying way above the market off the plan.

I’m not sure about the market “crashing soon”, this isn’t like the stock exchange where you wake up one morning and values have fallen 30%. The price declines looks to have well and truly started in many areas, though personally I don’t think there will be particularly large overall falls.

Out of interest on the stockmarket a “crash” is considered a fall of 20% or more and a correction is a fall of 10-20%.

acey’s comments are bang on the money, its takes sacrifice to build wealth, the toys are sucking your finances down the drain by the sounds of it.

I’m hearing similars thing in Melbourne also for inner city apartments, one I heard of was was bought for $380k off the plan about 5 years ago, sold $320k about a month ago. Then again lots of the new stuff being built seems to be just as overpriced compared to what apartements are getting on the open market.

I tend to think a fair bit of it is from people who may not know the market and get roped in by fancy marketing, like the example above of the New Zealanders

Have you though about what you could do on the net? Lots of students get invloved in this area as they often have alot of skills in that area and start up costs can be very low.

In terms of business generally my suggestion would be think about what your hobbies/interests are are and consider something related to them.

Just a few thoughts,

Freshwater Place and Eureka towers really aren’t in the same league as the central Equity buildings going up, the quality is much higher and the location better ie on the river where the views can’t be built out for many apartments. Eureka in particular is likely to be a very exclusive building with the top penthouses going for $8 million plus. The quality of apartments at the docklands is also considerably higher than central equity southbank places.

Central Equity seem more and more willing to put up towers very close to each other (5 together in the latest lot) there is also a large amount of vacant land behind those 5 currently used for parking, i.e. expect the views of the south facing apartments to be built out in 5-10 years.

Regarding prices I’ve heard of many examples of people experiencing capital losses in Southbank, an agent told me of a 2br apartment they sold last month, owner bought it off the plan 4 years ago @380k, sold last month for 320k. The better perfoming buildings tend to be the ones not developed by central equity. From what I can see the problem is simply overpricing, thats why they do so much marketing towards people who aren’t familar with the market here.

Don’t believe the claim about “they are very easy to let” vacancy rates of 1-2mths is pretty much standard around southbank, I’ve heard of brand new places being on the market for 6 mths or more before being let (since a big stream of apartments become available at the same time).