JPP News

Merry Christmas to all!

JPP Buyer Advocates would like to thank everyone for another fantastic year.
Each year our team looks back over the year to see how we can improve or what changes we need to make to enable us to continue to offer our valued clients the best possible service we can. We are always open to ideas, or suggestions.
One thing we know is a proven winner is to enjoy what we do. And at JPP we continually do.

We would like to wish everyone a safe and happy new year, our offices will be closed for a short period over the main days, however should you wish to catch up, just call or email, and we will certainly make time, or get back to you as soon as possible., If you wish to make an appointment over the break just email or call us and we will endeavour to accommodate you. We understand sometimes this is the best time for busy people who do not normally have spare time, so we are happy to catch up.

To those who are fortunate enough to be holidaying, be safe and enjoy your break.

Best Wishes,
Sam, Ian and the JPP Team

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JPP News

Latest at JPP

It is hard to believe there only a few weeks until Christmas
With Saturdays and Sundays flourishing with auctions, this time of year is always action packed.
And this year is no different, we have seen many auctions pass in and negotiated after, all of which we predicted would happening.
When we are assessing some properties we are more times than not aware of which properties will pass in and which ones will sell on the day.
This allows us to educate our buyers to be prepared that a negotiation after the auction will more than likely occur.
Our buyers are very grateful to know and be pre warned, as it can be very daunting to come to buy a house and then feel very intimidated if you are not experienced, as many good real estate agents will really push to get there vendor the best possible price for their home as that is who they are being paid by.
We have also had some fantastic results for our buyers with acting at the right time and purchasing properties prior to auctions, again this is all to do with knowing which properties will have competition and which ones wont.. And understanding the timing of Placing pre auction offers which is all to do with timing and understanding the situation as not all auction are run the same and many real estate companies run there systems differently.

Sam James

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Market Overview

Will Santa bring change to Melbourne Property?

2013 will be a very good year for average Australians. Many upsizers and downsizers will finally put their homes on the market and make the move they have been planning for a couple of years. Lowering interest rates will give investors more buying power. And further cuts to the stamp duty rates will assist first home owners.

For a couple of years now, many people who already own homes have listened to the media tell them they should not sell their homes. �If you do not have to sell, then don�t.� These headlines have been seen throughout the papers, blogs and tweets since early 2010. And many people believe and listen to these commentators. What they didn�t explain was that anyone trading in a property to purchase another will find the same market when they are purchasing. It started this year in October, grew to a rush in November and I think we will see a virtual flood in late February and early March of owner occupiers changing homes. This will increase the pool of property available but will also mean much greater demand from people with money to spend.

Investors have been a little shy to purchase good long term growth property of late. Much of the property that has good long term capital growth prospects has a lower yield than other properties. (For those spruikers who tell you that yield and growth are not related and that you can find great high yield properties that have fantastic growth: just remember if that were true, your average �mum and dad� investor would never be able to buy one. They would be snapped up by every institutional Superannuation fund that has $1Billion to invest!) But with the drop in interest rates an average negatively geared property becomes neutrally geared within a very short space of time. Negative gearing relies on capital growth all the time, neutral gearing property means you do not have to see as much growth in the short term to make this a much more intelligent investment than most share markets at the moment.

First home buyers have been squirreling money away for the past few years and with the stamp duty savings dropping by a further 10% for properties that settle after Jan 1 2013 and the further drop in interest rates that the banks are passing on over the next few weeks, I would say that competition in the sub $600k range will become quite fierce.

As soon as demand picks up, supply will follow. We have seen a small version of that throughout spring. October turnover was up slightly and ended on good clearance rates. This, in turn, led to more people putting their own homes on the market in November, which is why we still have 920 gazetted auctions next weekend and a further 120 3 days out from Christmas!

There are still a lot of hurdles to overcome before we talk about average 9% growth rates for Melbourne property in 2013. The US is still marching towards their fiscal cliff, but most of the commentators believe this disaster will be averted, at least in the short term. Growth numbers out of the US for employment and consumer spending are up. China�s growth will most likely ramp up again next year and hopefully there are some cool heads that will begin to drag Europe out of the economic mire it has found itself in. With another interest cut in early 2013, which the banks will pass on some of, I think we will see a slow climb in prices for the better suburbs of the Melbourne property market. Sustained slow growth through 2013 should see median prices climb about 5- 7% and without a further catastrophic event I would think that 2014 will see us back to our average 9% growth in the top third of suburbs in Melbourne. The only area I don�t foresee growth above inflation would be in new home estates.

For the many thousands of you who read this column each week and respond with comments and to all our valued clients, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and from all the team at JPP Buyer Advocates I would like to wish you a Safe and Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Our office will be closed from Friday 21st December until Monday 7th January 2013. Emails and phone messages will be answered in a timely fashion throughout this period.

Ian James
Director
JPP Buyer Advocates

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JPP Property Management

JPP Property Management has now been operating for over 12mths, Courtney has certainly excelled with this, she has such wonderful relationships with not only our fantastic landlords, but she meets and greets each tenant and keeps in ongoing communications with them all.

Courtney can organise your property management totally with regards to all bills, insurances, depreciation schedules etc; this enables our landlords to just sit back and allow their investment to work for them. Her feedback and landlord interaction is above and beyond. We find having the same ongoing contact person and being a family run business, enables us to give our landlords peace of mind knowing we have their best interests at heart.

If you have an investment property and not happy with your current manager, and would like Courtney to take over your management, you only need to call her and she will organise it all with you. 03 9523 1054 Alternatively if you are looking for an investment property, we can do all this from the start right through to getting tenants and any works required. We have such a wonderful group of trades which we are able to rely upon, this has helped with our great service we can offer.

Our property management team hear from other agencies, No news is good news, when they don�t hear from tenants or landlords. We would rather communicate with our landlords and tenants ongoing and have all parties aware of what is going on at all time, an investment property is not something you should just forget about, if you ensure your property manager is looking after your investment, it will continue to be of good value for you and should enable you to potentially increase your portfolio!

Sam James

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Melbourne Home Buyer Show 2012 (October)

After Long deliberation we decided to attend at the last minute as October is generally a very busy time for our company, having to attend the show Fri, Saturday & Sunday.
Therefor getting our team to all attend can be quiet a struggle, with auctions, open for inspections, and property management etc.
In the end we managed and post show, we are glad we did.
After reading a couple of negative press articles from people who obviously didn�t attend the show, shows how wrong the media and inexperienced people can get it wrong.

Our team met and spoke with many many home buyers and investors all of which were looking for someone to show or tell them what they should or shouldn�t be doing, which at shows like this you can get a tad overwhelmed, however if you use one of these shows to get information and then do your own investigation once you have read and had a chat or a meeting with the people of persons you felt you could trust with one of your biggest expenses / investments hopefully you will feel more confident with your decisions.
Our company has had wonderful feedback from the show and we have already worked with several people we met at the show. So for our company this was quiet a success.
If you saw us at the show, and want to catch up, call or email to make a time for a no obligation meeting at a suitable time.

Sam James

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Spotlight On Melbourne Suburbs

In our regular spotlight section we examine a selection of Melbourne suburbs, highlighting what's happening in these areas right now

Bayswater

Municipality: City of Knox
Population: 10,738 (2006 census)
Postcode: 3153
Location: 28km from Melbourne CBD

Located 28km east of Melbourne�s CBD Bayswater has a population of approx. 10,738 (2006 Census). A residential suburb attracting families with parks, schools and large 600sqm+ blocks of land. Mount Dandenong provides an attractive backdrop to Bayswater (situated to the east) with some stunning views. Residents like the peaceful nature of the area, lower land prices, yet still easy access to the CBD via the recently built Eastlink freeway. There are significant commercial areas in Bayswater, and a large proportion of residents are employed in the manufacturing sector. Shopping facilities include Mountain High Plaza which was built in 2009, with other shopping precincts located around the train station on High Street. There are two ovals in Bayswater regularly used for local Cricket matches as well as catering for other sporting activities. Bayswater park (also known by the locals as Train Park) has an old disused steam train which has been turned into a children�s playground.

Locals generally describe the suburb as a friendly area to live and generally quiet, however others have described it as both dull and boring. I would suggest it�s an area more suited towards families than single professionals who would appreciate a livelier atmosphere. Therefore investors should consider houses over apartments and look towards land and potential development opportunities.

Amenities

Main Schools:

Transport - Bayswater Train Station and a number of bus services

Shopping - Mountain High Plaza built 2009 with local shops on Mountain Hwy Rd.

Most of the housing in Bayswater is detached, on large blocks of land (600-700 + sqm) � plane �post war� in style (brick veneer or weather board) Many of the blocks � particularly in areas close to the shopping precinct and train station � have been subdivided. There�s a smaller number of apartment blocks and 2 bedroom villa units typically in blocks of 6 � 8. Newer town houses � generally double story � are becoming common is the population increases.

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Recent Articles Of Interest

First Home Buyers Relief

We are noticing more First Home buyers are returning to the market, with the additional help with the stamp duty savings this is allowing many purchasers that extra couple of thousand dollars to get into the market. We love assisting the first home buyers, as it is so rewarding knowing this is the start to the investments, making our job to ensure they buy the right property to start with and helping them achieve the dream of home ownership.
First home buyers should always check on the SRO Website to understand all there eligibilities as it is limited to purchase price limits.

REIV article here (source: REIV website)

September Median house prices.

The Reiv has released the Sept. quarter median house prices.

Click here to read (source: REIV website)

This is not always an accurate analogy looking at only quarter to quarter, as with all property, long term is the only way of seeing how well an area will perform, however it is always interesting!!!

Celebrity Home For Sale

Titanic sale.
Leonardo Di Caprio is selling his beautiful beachside home in Malibu for a the titanic sum of $23million dollars!!
Prior to this he attempted to rent it out at $75,000 per month, which is more than most of us earn in a year, oh to dream!!

Yes it would be lovely to do a normal days work to come home to this. But then where does it end, because then I would need someone to bring me a drink � (Ian)!!

*image from homes.yahoo.com

Sam James

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Recent Purchases

We have been very busy over the recent months with sales, While searching for good stock amongst the very average stock has been a challenge, purchasers are seeing properties selling under what they believe is the asking price and talking about how the market had dropped, after we discuss and show our clients that the properties selling below expectations are the ones which are below average, or at a below average address. Good Properties in Good locations will almost always sell for a fair and reasonable price, whether it is sold at auction, private Sale or passed in at auction, The majority of the time, you will see competition for these properties most of the time,.

Our happy clients were successful in the below suburbs. Apologies if all properties purchased are not here! At this time of the year, purchases are always high.

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Technology Monthly

Windows 8 First Impressions/Surface Impressions

Windows 8

So Windows 8 is finally here, and I have mixed feelings...on the one hand it is fairly different from previous versions which is good or bad depending on who you ask, on the other hand it seems that it was made with touch screens in mind more than the traditional PC.

Here are some of my initial likes and dislikes:

Likes:

Surface

I have only had time to play with the surface for a few minutes, so I won't be going into much detail, but here are my initial impressions.

The surface feels great, the build quality seems nice and it is quick and responsive...the addition of a full office suite (although it is Home and Student edition, meaning it does not include outlook) is nice to have on the go also... but (and this is a fairly big but) considering that this version only runs Windows 8 RT which is pretty much a crippled version of Windows, coupled with the fact that it has no option for 3g, only has 64gb of storage and they expect you to pay an extra $100 for the touch cover, the price is much too high to compete with the likes of the iPad (with it's over 700,000 apps) of the sub $300 nexus 7 tablet.

There is a pro version coming out in January which will run a full version of Windows 8, will have the option for a 128gb hard drive and will probably offer 3g (although this has not been officially announced) this will be priced around $1000 for the fully spec'd unit...and there is already talk that the battery will only last 4 hours, this does not make sense when you consider the fact that you can buy a netbook/laptop with similar if not better specs for much less, and you will get things like an optical drive, more ports, better battery and the keyboard included.

Although I believe that the surface will sell well initially, I think Microsoft will have to lower the price to compete with the likes of Apple and Google in the long run.

Chris Thursfield

*image from microsoft.com

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Recipe: Cadbury Christmas Tree Mini Mud Cakes

Ingredients:

• 500g Cadbury White Chocolate Melts
• 1 cup pure cream
• 125g butter, chopped
• 100g Cadbury Dark Baking Chocolate, broken into pieces
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup Cadbury Bournville Cocoa
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup dark rum or brandy
• 2/3 cup flour
• 1/4 cup SR flour
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• Green food colouring, for decorating
• Christmas cake sprinkles, for decoration
• Silver cachous, for decoration

Method:

1. Melt together the white chocolate and cream in a bowl over gently simmering water, stirring occasionally, until smooth.

2. Stand ganache at room temperature for 2 hours before refrigerating until firm enough to pipe.

3. Place the butter, dark chocolate, sugar, cocoa, water and rum in a saucepan and melt together gently, stirring occasionally. Cool slightly.

4. Whisk in the sifted flours and then the egg and mix well. Transfer mixture to a jug and pour into 36 paper lined mini muffins pans.

5. Bake in a moderate oven 180OC for 20 minutes or until cooked when tested. Stand 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Cool.

6. Colour the ganache with green food colouring to resemble leaves the spoon into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm star nozzle.

7. Pipe a rosette of ganache onto each cake to resemble a tree then decorate. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator until required.

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