One of my favourite things is to go to SMH, find an article in the property section about property values, or rental vacancies, or anything about affordability really, and read the comments. The home-owning fundamentalists and the doomsdayers all come out and interpret things their way, or rubbish the article on the basis of their experience. You get the every angle on every debate about living in Sydney, all expressed briefly and punchily, in the comments. Rent vs buy, housing crash vs under-supply, North Shore vs Inner West... The articles themselves are usually boring and made of hot air, the comments are where the juice is.
One thing I came across, which I'm going to use in the future, is
www.refindhouseprices.com/ which tracks changes in advertised rentals and sales prices. So you can see how long a place has been advertised and if they've had to drop the price or not and by how much %. Example of the unit next to me, still empty after a month: now asking $530.
REDUCED by $50 p/w (8.62%) on 26 Jul 2011
Large 2 bedroom apartment
(36) Days Advertised
ooh...that is quite interesting!
ReplyDelete