Plant a bigger garden
As our houses get bigger and blocks smaller, it is becoming ever more important to optimise the space available for a garden. Fortunately, it only takes a few clever plantings in a border along the fence line to make your…
News
‘Honeymoon’ home loans: sweet or sour?
Most lenders offer a home loan product with an introductory or ‘special honeymoon’ rate. Should you take advantage while you can, or are they more honey trap than honeymoon? Introductory rates are usually lower than the standard variable home loans…
Trees rule here
A group of residents in Hobart have opted to swap out car parking spaces on their street for more trees, the ABC reported this week. Rupert Avenue resident Ruby Wilson told ABC Radio Hobart that a community petition resulted in…
3 years on: how are we doing?
It’s been three years since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, and Australian housing market performance has shown extraordinary, record-breaking figures. So, will it go back to ‘normal’ – and what would that look like? Property data firm CoreLogic this…
House approvals hit 10-year low
Approvals to build new apartments continue to flag, according to data released this week by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The latest figures show that the total number of homes approved fell 27.6% in January (seasonally adjusted) after a 15.3%…
Lean, clean and gleaming
Refrigerators with mood lighting, steam showers and glittering benchtops. This is what we’ve been delaying our renovations for, and they were all on display recently at the 2023 Kitchen & Bath Industry Show (KBIS) in Las Vegas. Among emerging kitchen…
Fight the front hall chaos
What sight greets you when you walk in the front door of your home? Is it a sleek, peaceful entry, or a chaotic pile of abandoned shoes, schoolbags, hats and a month’s accumulation of junk mail? If you find yourself…
Speed up your mortgage
Want to build equity and shave years off your home loan? Consider making mortgage payments every two weeks instead of once a month. Over a year, this will add up to 13 monthly payments instead of 12, meaning you’ll build…
Chucky lives here…
Halloween is gaining in popularity in Australia but would you want to live in it all year round? That’s what a vendor in Texas seems to be hoping, with their recent listing of an ‘established and running haunted house’. Listed…
Values barely shift
Home values around the country barely moved over the month of February, new data shows. CoreLogic’s Home Value Index (HVI) recorded a sharp reduction in the rate of decline through February. The national index declined 0.14% over the month, the…
