In the news this week, values still growing; competition for home lending ‘alive and kicking’; and ideas for landscaping your night garden
Home values continue to rise in most states due largely to low inventory levels, new research shows.
Cotality’s Home Value Index for February has revealed a clear divergence in housing trends, with Sydney and Melbourne values flatlining while the other capitals continued to record a solid rate of gain of more than 1 per cent each month.
Australians put $2.8 billion into savings during January this year, a new report shows.
Looking at APRA data released this week, financial comparison site Canstar noted that household deposits among authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) hit a new record high of $1.72 trillion in January, an increase of $134.5 billion over the year.
Carefully planned garden lighting can create visually open spaces at night, with dramatic features or intimate nooks just like a well-lit room. Lit effectively, parts of the garden at night can become another room of your house, provide long vistas or delight with surprising glimpses from within the interior.
Approvals to build new apartments dropped by one-quarter in January, according to data released this week by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The seasonally adjusted figures show that the total number of homes approved fell 7.2 per cent in January to 14,564. ABS head of construction statistics Daniel Rossi said the result was driven by a 24.5 per cent fall in multi-unit homes.
Is this the perfect housewarming gift for those friends who already have everything?
UK firm Chronova Engineering have created an interplanetary clock, a mechanical device that can tell what time it is on other planets using rotating discs. It works by copying how each planet spins, as each planet has its own dial, and each dial is connected to the gears. Image: Chronova Engineering
The value of work done on residential building increased by 1.0 per cent in the December quarter, the ABS said this week. This figure is 8 per cent higher than at the same time last year.
The annual results varied widely around the country, from a rise of 19.9 per cent in South Australia, to a 14.2 per cent fall in the Northern Territory. Elsewhere, the results were less dramatic, showing improvement in NSW (up 3.4 per cent), Queensland (6.4 per cent), and Victoria (0.9 per cent), and falls in Tasmania (3.6 per cent), WA (1.9 per cent), and the ACT (2.7 per cent).