The July 2011 Sydney property market gets off to a steady start in fiscal 2012

With a lot happening in the lead up to the imminent launch of the new Curtis Associates web site, this month’s CurtiseCall is a little shorter than usual.

The Sydney property market trends discussed in CurtiseCall June 2011 continued this month. For example:

• there was another mortgagee sale in Potts Point; this time of 207/1A Tusculum Street, Potts Point in the up market Rockwall Gardens complex which sold under the hammer for $ $910,000
• despite the Aussie dollar reaching a post float high of $US1.108 on 27 July 2011, Curtis Associates continued to receive inquiries and instructions from overseas buyers and others buying in foreign currency
• according to Australian Property Monitors, Sydney was the only Australian capital city to show a rise in property house prices in the June 2011 quarter albeit a modest 0.1%
• the sales of the unrenovated, freestanding but badly overlooked at the rear 86 Francis Street, Bondi on 5 July 2011 for $1.55 million and 2 Vicars Avenue, North Bondi on 11 July 2011 for $1.22 million (the latter after only three days of marketing,) established that the $1.307 million sale last month of 20 Knowles Avenue, North Bondi was not out of line. This sales evidence suggests strong capital gains for those who bought similar properties in those areas in the past 12 – 18 months
• the Reserve Bank of Australia kept interest rates on hold for the seventh consecutive month with odds firming on the chance of rates falling in coming months.

Meanwhile, on the State front and in a rare public address during a packed business luncheon on 27 July 2011 which, surprisingly , attracted relatively little media attention, the New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell (or “Barry” as he asked to be called) made some candid remarks about the performance over the first 100 days of his Government.

For those working in the Sydney property market, it was difficult not to be impressed by Barry’s apparent command of the details of the bureaucratic changes that are underway to deliver the long term infrastructure Sydney so badly needs and the speed at which those changes appear to be occurring.

Whether the reality will match the rhetoric as well as Barry’s promise to de politicise infrastructure delivery in New South Wales and eclipse the progress made in that regard in Victoria during the Kennett era, remains to be seen. At this stage at least, it appears to be a step in the right direction.