A MILLION new homes need to be built over the next five years to cope with Australia’s booming population, new figures out from the Housing Association show.

The number of houses currently being built falls well short of this, and according to the HIA, there’ll be a shortfall of at least 175,000 houses if current building rates continue.

The outlook is even bleaker if household sizes keep shrinking - ie more people choose to live alone - this could blow-out to a 240,000 shortfall.

“Supply must increase rapidly to meet expected demand,” said the Housing Industry Association’s chief executive of policy, Chris Lamont.

“Without a substantial increase in production there will almost certainly be a growth in the number of homeless and further affordability woes.”

He said the increased demand for new housing was driven by two main factors: rising  immigration, and more people choosing to live alone.

Australia’s population grew by 332,000, or 1.6 per cent last year.

Record-low affordability

A shortage of housing is one of the key drivers in record-low housing affordability.

The Housing Industry Association (HIA)/Commonwealth Bank First Home Buyer Affordability Index fell 3.5 per cent in the quarter, and was down 10 per cent on the same time last year. 

Mortgage repayments now account for 29.1 per cent of an average first home buyer’s income – the highest percentage on record.

Construction tailing off

Despite rising demand, the supply of new houses is dwindling as high rates put the squeeze on the property market. Official interest rates are sitting at 12-year high of 7.25 per cent. The Reserve Bank meets tomorrow to make its latest interest rate announcement, with most economists tipping rates will stay on hold.

Data out earlier this month showed that number of new residential homes being built in March quarter fell 3.3 per cent. Construction of new private houses fell 6.3 per cent in the quarter, while other typed of property – such as apartment – fared better with a 3 per cent rise.

More states suffered falls in new housing starts than rises in the quarter. Tasmania had a 13.3 per cent decline, Queensland 9 per cent, Western Australia 7.3 per cent, Victoria 4.8 per cent and the ACT 16.9 per cent. On the upside, South Australia rose 24.7 per cent, NSW was up 9.3 per cent and the Northern Territory rose 14.9 per cent.

June 30, 2008 12:27pm -  www.news.com.au

building figures

“Underlying housing demand is already outstripping new supply, and the gap is set to widen sharply, driving pent-up housing demand to record levels,” he said.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said yesterday new apartment approvals fell 18.2 per cent in May and were down 4.2 per cent over the past 12 months.

New house approvals fell 1.2 per cent and were down 1.7 per cent over the year. In Victoria total building approvals were up 2.8 per cent.

interest rates

“Interest rate hikes have spooked investors and budding owner-occupiers.

“Investors are putting their money in the bank and people are staying in the rental market longer. But the situation is unsustainable.”

Mr James said rents and house prices would be forced up because of the tight conditions, which would eventually attract more investors and lead to more building.

“The latest slump in new dwelling approvals is clearly bad news for those renting,” he said.

“The supply of apartments isn’t rising but the number of people wanting to rent certainly is.”

Victorian rents are at record highs and housing affordability is close to record lows.

The Commonwealth Bank’s senior economist, Michael Workman, said interest rates would need to start falling and buyers would need to believe prices were rising before they would re-enter the market.

By Craig Binnie July 03, 2008 08:14am-   www.news.com.au

This month I’d like to look at property opportunities in the current market, and an exciting new type of trading system which many internet marketers are now making very good consistent monthly profits from.

Property Opportunities.

There is a lot of doom and gloom talk about property, with the problems in the US and rising interest rates here, which has made many investors nervous and not go ahead with investing. This is a great opportunity for the investors who are still willing to invest, as there is less competition. Is it a good time to invest in property? The only way we have of telling is to look at history, and property has always continued to grow, providing you are not trying to get in and out fast. So for investors wanting to buy and hold, now is as good a time as any, providing you have the cashflow to support your investments, and you pick a good area and property to invest in.

The trick is to invest in areas which have ongoing demand, such as towns where the population is growing, and not in areas where growth is slow. There are always some areas which are growing faster than others, and these are the areas to investigate.

Look at it this way. Would you have liked to have bought a few quality investment properties 20 years ago. Even if you had bought when interest rates were around 17%. If you had bought in a decent growth area, your investment would now be worth 4 to 8  times (or more) what you had paid, as good property doubles every 7 to 10 years. If you had bought 3 properties for $120,000 each, they would now be worth conservatively somewhere between $1,400,000 and $2,000,000 in total, and you would have equity of at least $1million. This equity you can put to work to produce more capital growth, or passive income so that you don’t need to work.

I have written an ebook which outlines a simple plan for building wealth in property “How to Create a $million in Property in 9.5 years…” which you can download for free here:

http://learntoberich.com.au/free_products/free_ebooks.php

A recent  article from the Townsville Bulletin, 28th June 2008 outlines my point. The article quoted PRD Nationwide’s  latest figures for the March quarter being more than twice the number of sales than the December quarter. They put it down to affordability and the resilience of the Townsville market, where investors can see a decent return. The market there has had over 10% growth in the last 12 months, and population growing over 2% per annum. Other Queensland markets are also strong as well as South Australia and Melbourne.

I have been investing in the Queensland market myself, and have access to some top quality, affordable, off the plan townhouses in Townsville. The townhouses are independently valued at $375k which is the selling price, and there is a $7,500 rebate at settlement, next year. They can be secured with just $1000 and  a deposit bond for a few thousand dollars. If you are interested in the details, send me an email, with “Townsville Property Details” in the subject, and I can send you a detailed information pack.

New Trading System - with a Twist. (Business in a box system)

I have emailed some of you previously about this new trading system, and how it came about, so bear with me whist I explain to the others who don’t yet know about it.

Just about everyone is familiar with trading in the sharemarket, where the aim is to buy low and sell high. All business and commerce works this way, you make a profit on the difference.

There is a new industry in the last decade which has been growing at a phenomenal pace, this industry is online advertising. Some of the world’s fastest growing companies make their money by selling advertising, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

What many smart internet marketers have been doing is creating websites to take advantage of this industry and make a profit for themselves. The industry is now a $20 billion per annum industry, and so there is plenty to go around. The way that small internet marketers usually do this is to build many websites and display Google ads on their sites, so that when visitors to their site click on the ads, they make a profit, which is paid to them each month by Google. Sounds simple, right. The problem is getting the traffic to come to your website, and then getting them to click on the ads.

There have been many smart individuals who have managed to make a successful business from doing exactly this, and some make a very good income from $20k a month to a million a year. Most however are only able to generate a few hundred dollars profit a month.

A young Australian developed his own system, and fine tuned it to the point where he was able to generate $400,000 in a month. He sold his system to a large company in Sydney for over $20 million, and the company have gone on to fine tune this system.

They have created more than 2000 websites over the last 2 years and each one of them is profitable, the minimum profit level being $30 a day per website (not a bad daily profit). They have created an automated system so that once the sites are running and making money, they switch them on autopilot, and then they basically run themselves, and maintain the profit level. They can manage these 2000+ websites with a team of 9 traders who simply make sure they are running ok, and build new sites. They also are in the business of selling profitable websites , which sell for up to 3 times their annual profit..

So what does this have to do with you? The company have decided to release the system to the public so that they will have much larger leverage on creating websites. The system is capable of handling far more websites than they could produce inhouse. So now they are selling business packages which include full training and support to build a number of websites, each of which can produce minimum $30 a day profit, and can be sold for a very good markup after several months of consistent profits.

The business packages are aimed at minimum $100k per annum profit, for an initial $25k investment in 10 websites.
If this sounds like something you would like to learn more about, click on this link to watch a video, fill in your name and email address, and type LTBR in the code to be able to watch the video.

www.myprofitsystem.com/br/intro/

Upcoming seminars

Anyone who decides to invest in the Jamie McIntyre homestudy over the next month, and books into the Queenstown or Melbourne 4 day seminar will also be eligible to receive a Free Tony Robbins ticket to see Tony in Sydney at his  UPW seminar. Any queries on this, please contact customer support on

support@LearnToBeRich.com.au

To View the full article from Townsville Bulletin, 28th June 2008 mentioned above Click Here

Until next time

Good investing.

Keith Mason.

LearnToBeRich.com.au
(a division of Southeast Funding P/L)
PO Box 1222
Batemans Bay
NSW 2536 Australia