Upper Mountains real estate market highlights
The Upper Blue Mountains real estate market is still moving well. We brought 10 new properties to the market in March and we sold 9 properties. The highlight for the team at Ray White was the sale of 123 Govetts Leap Road, Blackheath, also known as The Laurels, an iconic 1800’s Blue Mountains estate with its heritage tied to Parklands.
Over 5 weekends we opened this Historic home which received a high level of interest from locals and visitors alike, the property had a total of 142 inspections during that time and 13 contract requests. The buyers mostly came from the Inner West, North Shore, Eastern Suburbs, Northern Sydney, Central Sydney and the Blue Mountains.
Come auction day the excitement around this special property was mounting, by 12pm we had 7 registered bidders and a packed room at Blackheath Golf Club. The bidding started slowly with an opening bid of $1million, then two other buyers entered the contest, after that the bidding came in quick succession with the final bids going up in $1000 increments, 31 bids later the property sold ‘Under the Hammer’ for $1,405,000, which was $305,000 above the vendors reserve price.
This was a fantastic result not only for the team at Ray White but also for real estate in the Blue Mountains, Blackheath and the Upper Mountains has proven again to be a very resilient market and a popular choice for Sydney buyers.
National Real Estate News
With the federal election only 4 weeks away it is difficult to talk about the national real estate market without taking into account the result of the election, especially with negative gearing on the agenda again. So what have labour got planned for negative gearing and how could that effect the property market?
‘Labor: Will limit negative gearing to newly built housing from January 1, 2020’.
‘All investments made before this date will not be affected by this change and will be fully grandfathered, meaning those who already own investment properties will still be able to claim deductions on those properties against their other income.’
‘The housing industry has warned against curbing negative gearing, with Louis Christopher from property analysis firm SQM Research cautioning that it could lower property prices by up to 12 per cent and also push rents higher.’
‘If negative gearing is removed and capital gains tax changes implemented, there will be less of an incentive for individuals to use property as an investment vehicle. With the removal of a segment of buyers from the market, not only will this cause prices to fall but the number of transactions will reduce. As prices fall, there is also less of an incentive for current owners to sell.’ (Brian White of Ray White).
‘When negative gearing was briefly abolished on rental properties by the Hawke government in 1985, rents did rise in Sydney and Perth, but not across Australia as the property industry had been warning would happen.’
The Commonwealth Treasury declined to back arguments that removing negative gearing tax concessions would significantly lower home prices, saying in the long term “they were unlikely to have much impact”.
