Sydney’s median house price is expected to eclipse $1 million within the next few years, new research has found.Just a decade ago, Sydney’s median house price was $328,000 with few believing it would surpass $500,000.

However, the latest data from Australian Property Monitors found that over the next decade Sydney’s inner city region is expected to maintain an average growth of 7.6 per cent with the median property price reaching $1.2 million.

This is not the first time predictions like this have been made. Earlier this year, Residex’s chief executive officer John Edwards told The Adviser that Sydney had traditionally achieved a consistently high growth rate, which would force houses to tip the $1 million price bracket sooner rather than later.

(By: Matthew Sullivan (The Adviser), Thursday, 30 September 2010)

SOUTH Australian Planning Minister Paul Holloway has rejected calls to “back-zone” a controversial housing development that will bring Adelaide’s suburban sprawl to the doorstep of the world-renowned McLaren Vale wine district.

The local Onkaparinga Council wants Mr Holloway to return the 77ha site to rural use even though it has been zoned residential since at the least the 1990s.Mr Holloway said the council’s position raised serious questions about its capacity to deal with planning matters consistently and effectively.

“To request the zoning be reverted to rural at the 11th hour is a backflip of such monumental proportions that it must surely undermine the public’s confidence in the council’s processes and effectively deter any investment within City of Onkaparinga to the detriment of the residents they purport to represent,” Mr Holloway said.

The proposed Seaford Heights development includes 1170 houses and a shopping strip at the entrance to McLaren Vale. It has outraged local winemakers, who say it will harm tourism and alter land and soil that is perfect for growing vines.

Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg yesterday admitted the council backflip was due largely to public pressure.The developer, Fairmont Homes, has declined to comment but the Urban Development Institute of Australia said it would be a “tragedy” if the development did not go ahead.

The council had allowed a vocal minority to get a stranglehold, the institute’s South Australian executive director, Terry Walsh, said. “This is a major piece of land that will allow increased population in accordance with (Adelaide’s) 30-year plan and thus would have allowed for increased infrastructure.”

He said Mr Holloway’s stance was “admirable”.Mr Holloway said government decisions to invest millions in local rail and road corridors “assumed that Seaford Heights would be developed for housing”.He said the Rann government would have “little alternative” but to take over the development plan for the site if the council did not co-operate.

His office has been unable to find any precedent for a planning minister back-zoning land from residential to rural use.

(Source: Pia Akerman, From: The Australian, September 10, 2010 12:00AM)

The Reserve Bank of Australia has decided to keep the official cash rate on hold at 4.5 per cent for the fourth consecutive month.

Uncertainty surrounding the global economic outlook, consumer spending and Australia’s political situation forced the Board to leave rates unchanged.Rates have been on hold since May. Prior to that, concerns about rising inflation forced the RBA to lift rates by 25 basis points in March, April and May.

While local economic data shows the Australian economy has grown at the fastest pace in three years, ongoing economic uncertainty abroad ultimately forced the RBA to err on the side of caution when making the latest rate decision.

“The current setting of monetary policy is resulting in interest rates to borrowers around their average levels of the past decade. With growth in the near term likely to be close to trend, inflation close to target and with the global outlook remaining somewhat uncertain, the Board judged this setting of monetary policy to be appropriate for the time being,” RBA governor Glenn Stevens said in his statement on monetary policy.

The news did not come as a surprise, with many economists predicting the RBA would leave rates unchanged when it met in Adelaide today.

AMP chief economist Shane Oliver said the stronger than expected data culminating in above trend growth in the June quarter was balanced against uncertainty regarding the global outlook and expectations that inflation is likely to remain within the target range over the year ahead

(By: Jessica Darnbrough, Tuesday, 07 September 2010)