According to The Australian Financial Review, developers Icon Kajima and Mulpha Australia are taking advantage of weaker land values and stronger room rates to develop boutique hotels in the Sydney CBD that will attract both business and leisure travellers.
Icon Kajima’s $265 million project at 499 Kent Street – site of the heritage-listed RCA House building built in 1936 – is for a 229-key hotel across 23 storeys that already has secured a stage 1 approval and on which construction should start next year.

https://www.afr.com/property/commercial/icon-kajima-mulpha-tap-sydney-s-growing-lifestyle-hotel-demand-20230919-p5e623
 

According to The Australian Financial Review, Victoria is considering a fast-track planning system to boost the pace of new housing development, as part of a comprehensive housing package the state is due to unveil this month, Premier Daniel Andrews says.
Speaking at the launch of a $210 million mixed-tenure housing project in inner-suburban Melbourne’s Kensington recently, Mr Andrews declined to say whether the reforms would curb local councils’ powers, but said he wanted to speed up approvals processes.
“What we’re keen to do is to make sure that things that have been lying around, applications that have been lying around for way too long, get dealt with, and that applications that haven’t even been submitted yet, if they meet criteria, if they are high quality, and they have an eye to affordability, then they should be approved as fast as possible,” Mr Andrews said.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/victoria-eyeing-fast-track-housing-applications-daniel-andrews-says-20230914-p5e4oa
 

According to The Australian Financial Review, Sydney house prices resumed rising at a faster clip in August, increasing 1.1 per cent over the month, and defying any expectations of a double-dip downturn in values, data from CoreLogic shows.
Home values also re-accelerated in Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra, but slowed in Perth and Hobart.
Sydney has led the recovery, with home values climbing 8.8 per cent since bottoming out in January this year, inching closer to a 10 per cent gain over 2023 as predicted by Westpac.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/sydney-house-price-rise-to-hit-10-pc-this-year-as-recovery-firms-up-20230831-p5e0vs
 

According to The Australian Financial Review, a slumping new home market is creating opportunities for builders able to meet the needs of buyers with less money to spend but who still need to buy a new home.
The Housing Industry Association on Tuesday said new home sales fell for a second month in July, prompting the lobby group for large house builders to renew predictions of decade-low activity next year even if interest rates were cut immediately.
Separately, however, even as ASX-listed builder Tamawood predicted a “subdued” next 12 months for the industry as a whole, the company said it was seeing an increase in sales of its single-storey, four-bedroom homes to clients now priced out of the market for larger two-storey homes.
He said the increase in sales – of homes about $300,000-$350,000 in price – had recovered the company’s total from the decline of about 30 per cent it suffered after raising prices from mid-2020 after the start of the HomeBuilder incentive payments.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/builders-find-opportunity-in-a-tough-market-20230822-p5dyhr
 

According to The Australian Financial Review, the number of auctions and clearances were higher in the week to 12 August, which experts say shows vendors and buyers have gained confidence that interest rate rises are coming to an end.
The clearance rate, 71.3 per cent, was a touch higher than the 71 per cent initial rate a week earlier – a figure subsequently revised down to 64.5 per cent – as the number of scheduled auctions rose picked up to 1911 from 1746 in the east coast-dominated national market, CoreLogic figures showed.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/house-sells-500k-over-reserve-as-market-volumes-pick-up-20230813-p5dw2j
 

According to The Australian Financial Review, Daiwa House sees Australia as a “big target” for growth, buoyed by demand from an increasing population, but is quiet about whether expansion plans will include its challenged subsidiary, Rawson Homes.
Japan’s largest home builder acquired Sydney-based Rawson in 2017 and last month announced a build-to-rent joint venture with Lendlease – in which it will invest $250.5 million by June 2025 – as part of plans to expand globally at a time when Japan’s domestic population is shrinking.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/australia-s-growing-population-a-big-target-for-daiwa-house-20230809-p5dv2j
 

According to The Australian Financial Review, new housing approvals fell to their lowest in four years over the 2023 calendar year, as the fastest interest rate-tightening cycle in a generation cut buyers’ ability to borrow at the same time as construction costs soared.
A 7.7 per cent monthly decline in June pulled the yearly total of new home approvals to 175,790, the weakest since June 2020, with a 13.8 per cent year-on-year decline in detached house approvals to 106,958 and a 10.5 per cent slide in attached homes to 68,831, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/new-home-approvals-fall-to-weakest-in-four-years-20230801-p5dszs
 

According to The Australian Financial Review, cash buyers piled into Melbourne’s CBD during the June quarter, snapping up 601 apartments, the largest volume of mortgage-free residential property transactions of any suburb in the country, amid signs downsizer activity is ramping up, data from online conveyancing firm PEXA shows.
This comes as the number of homes sold without a mortgage jumped sharply across the biggest states during the same period, with Victoria posting a 24.3 per cent rise, NSW notching a 31 per cent increase and Queensland lifting 14.4 per cent.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/cash-buyers-flock-to-melbourne-cbd-gold-coast-apartments-20230719-p5dpf5
 

According to The Australian Financial Review, Lendlease and Daiwa House will develop a 45-level build-to-rent tower, the final piece of the Australian company’s Melbourne Quarter project and its second BTR project at home.
The deal to develop the $650 million building, like Lendlease’s first 443-unit BTR project in its 5.5-hectare mixed-use precinct at Brisbane Showgrounds, is a standalone investment and separate from efforts the ASX-listed company is making to establish a broader BTR partnership that will include multiple assets.

https://www.afr.com/property/commercial/lendlease-partners-with-japan-s-daiwa-house-on-btr-20230717-p5dot5
 

According to The Australian Financial Review, new apartment construction leapt in the March quarter, with economists calling it a good start that had to increase further to offset the slowdown in house-building and boost Australia’s overall supply of new homes.
A 56 per cent jump in starts of units, townhouses and semi-detached homes lifted the quarterly total from a seasonally adjusted 12,782 in the December quarter to 19,981 – the highest quarterly total since September 2021, official figures on Wednesday showed.
There was an element of catch-up in the numbers, which have declined in each of the previous six quarters since Q3 2021, but the turnaround contrasted with commencements of new detached houses, which fell for a seventh straight quarter, down 5.5 per cent to 26,265.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/apartment-surge-a-good-start-to-offset-housing-slowdown-20230712-p5dnqy