Property

Canberra home values surged 2.3 per cent in June to take the gain for the financial year to a massive 18 per cent as supply dwindles in the face of insatiable demand. The latest CoreLogic data shows growth is being driven mainly by the demand for stand-alone houses, with values soaring by 20.7 per cent over the past year. In...

Purchases of off-the-plan properties priced up to $500,000 will no longer have to pay stamp duty as part of the next phase of tax reform starting on Thursday (1 July). The new stamp duty regime will mean savings for all property buyers, but the ACT Government is trumpeting the benefits for buyers at the lower end of the market and how...

The outer suburbs of Belconnen and Tuggeranong offer the best value for house hunters in the ACT's hot property market, according to new data showing the 20 suburbs with the lowest price by median value. The figures from CoreLogic list the best value 20 suburbs for houses and units as at May 2021, together with the median values from the...

Couples saving for their first home in the ACT will need to wait almost twice as long to garner a 20 per cent deposit for a house than a unit, and will pay nearly $300,000 more for a house. The 2021 Domain First-Home Buyer Report says it now takes six years to save for a deposit for an entry level...

Seventeen new ACT suburbs have soared into the million-dollar club this year as Canberra's runaway housing market reaches unprecedented heights. CoreLogic’s inaugural Million Dollar Markets report has identified 218 markets across the country where either house or unit median values in a suburb reached the million-dollar mark in May 2021 compared to May 2020. In the ACT, 22 suburbs made the...

Much has been said recently about the development of Gungahlin Town Centre. In February this year, I moved a motion in the ACT Legislative Assembly, calling on the government to improve the mix of development in our town centre. The aim is to make sure our planning laws provide for a mix of activity in our centres. That people have...

The Gungahlin Town Centre land sales this week has been surrounded by controversy but one of the auction results is good news for a community seeking more businesses and jobs and less residential development. Registered training organisation Canberra Business and Technology College bought two of the smaller blocks for $5.1 million and $4.2 million, as part of expansion plans. The...

Gungahlin Community Council has called for the sale of further land within the Gungahlin Town Centre to be suspended out of frustration that concerns about more balanced development there continues to be ignored. In letters on Tuesday (27 April) to the Minister for Planning and Land Management Mick Gentleman and the CEO of the Suburban Land Agency, the GCC says that...

Canberra's infamous ice boxes remain in the sights of housing campaigners as they launched a new campaign on Friday (30 April) for minimum energy efficiency standards in rental properties. Winter is coming, and the national push, dubbed Healthy Homes for Renters, involves 50 community organisations including ACTCOSS, Shelter ACT and Better Renting. The campaign claims thousands of Australians are dying...

The release for sale of four more mixed-use sites in Gungahlin Town Centre will disappoint community representatives alarmed at the lack of job-creating commercial developments there. As some of the last mixed-use development sites in the town centre, they will go under the hammer next month. The ACT Suburban Land Agency has released four CZ5 sites for sale in the...

WorkSafe ACT inspectors swooped on 19 construction sites in Throsby on Wednesday (21 April) as part of its ongoing safety blitz on the building industry and found only one site compliant. The 25 workplace visits resulted in 31 improvement notices, eight prohibition notices, and four infringement notices being issued, to the value of $11,520. One site was shut down due...

A majestic 300-year-old box tree stands like a guiding light at one end of the Lumi Collection development in Gungahlin. And in many senses, that's exactly its role. Two apartment blocks take their cues in size and scale from the registered tree, which was treated with kid gloves to ensure that its hydrology was unaffected by the construction process. "When...

Lendlease has won the tender to develop the historic Gold Creek Homestead Precinct in Gungahlin providing new housing opportunities and an aged care facility for Canberrans. The company was awarded the tender to redevelop the site following a nationally advertised sale process. About 8000 square metres of the 4.8 hectare site is home to the remnant Gold Creek Homestead dating back...

The now apocryphal story about premiers counting the cranes on the skyline to gauge the health of the economy comes to mind as Chief Minister Andrew Barr oversees a Canberra that is going to be transformed over the next decade. Right across the ACT, but particularly in the city and town centres, a growing pipeline of construction projects will keep...

Building giant Geocon has made wholesale changes to a Gungahlin development that pitted it against a neighbouring child care centre, but it still faces a battle over the project's size. Last August, the planning authority rejected the company's amended development application for the already approved 14-storey Establishment mixed-use project in Swain Street after the YMCA Gungahlin Early Learning Centre raised...

A massive mixed-use development planned for Gungahlin may be powered completely by the sun, mostly through an off-site solar farm, which would be a Canberra-first. POD Project Group's proposed four-building, 561-unit project in the Town Centre features a suite of sustainability measures beyond current requirements that put it at the cutting edge of 'green' development in Canberra. They include solar...