A look at Perth’s' upcoming Developments

Relaxed magic of sunset drink and cruising down the Swan River embraces Perth while living with music, swimming and cycling along the secluded bays. There are several projects in the offing in and around Perth and in a short span of time they would be completed.

Elizabeth Quay

Elizabeth Quay is one of the major projects witnessed in the city for attracting all age groups of the society throughout the year. The project spread over 1.5 hectares links the promenade spaces with a series of parks around the island. The parks will be people friendly free from motor vehicles. The project will re-establish the historic connections of the city with the River. The project is likely to be completed by 2015 and is expected to create a good number of jobs, residential apartments beside retail and office spaces.

Fiona Stanley Hospital

Fiona Stanley Hospital of international acclaim is opening shortly at the precinct in Murdoch. It will be accommodating around 800 beds at an estimated cost of $2billion, with a full range of medical and surgical facilities including cancer, mental health and burns unit. 

Perth Children’s Hospital

Due for completion in mid-2015, the hospital will provide a pediatric trauma centre facility with an integrated education and research facility for child health. The Perth’s leading pediatric care centre will be housing rehabilitation and burns facility including neonatal intensive care beds

Perth City Link

Perth City Link, to be completed by 2020, can be a dynamic destination for embracing and revitalizing the city life. The exciting link is expected to provide improved access to the foreshore, creating five new connections for locals and tourists, with high-quality public spaces.

Perth Stadium

The new Perth Stadium project is well underway of completion by 2018. It will be a multi-purpose venue with a 60,000 seating capacity, for hosting cricket and football (AFL). The stadium utilizes state of the art technology and innovative design techniques. The sports precinct will be an integral part of major development enhancing the reputation of Perth as world class city.

New Museum

The New Museum will integrate current heritage buildings like Hackett hall, Old Gaol, Jubilee and Beaufort Street wings. The new museum will have increased floor spaces and new theme exhibitions. It is expected to be completed by 2020.

Forrestfield-Airport Link

The Forrestfield-Airport Link through underground tunnels and underground stations for consolidated bus and rail services will provide 3000 parking bays at three new stations by the year 2020. The bus-train interchange facility for transfer of passengers for both domestic and international flights will be an added feature of the project.

MAX Light Rail

Perth is expected to encompass a light network of rail and metro of 22 Km track. The visionary project will bring in a new era of transport for public in and around Perth.

The frequently run coaches are expected to render high capacity service and will facilitate commuters in the inner-north and central west and eastern suburbs of Perth. 

It is expected to be completed in eight to ten years. It will provide a transformational project with procurement commencing from 2017 and the services are expected to be operational running by late 2022. The project will work as a catalyst for coordinated land-use planning and bringing in new stimulating developments all along the alignment. 

The projects with overwhelming potential for developments would prove to be an asset of the future in Perth, Australia.

Thinking of buying a home in Brisbane? Here's what your life will look like

You will love staying in Brisbane just as so many others.

The city of Brisbane has an ample supply of sunlight and clear skies that will make you feel happy and contented to live in such a clean and modern city. Here you will find the people living happy, always ready to befriend and to help you. There is nothing to compare between the serious and intense looking people seen on the streets of any other city to the happy and fresh looking people in Brisbane.   

There are various reasons for the happiness of the people of Brisbane. The people who have migrated to this place from Asia and the Far East have introduced Brisbane to an array of heavenly food that are readily available or can be taken home for cooking at your leisure. The banks on the side of the river Brisbane flowing through the middle of the city are filled with food stalls on Sundays where you can enjoy yourself.

You can even barbeque your food in areas provided in the lovely parks here. It is unthinkable in a place like Glasgow, where vandals would lay waste to such facilities. You will feel happy to live in a place where there is an appreciation for this type of facility and no urge to destroy them.

You can find wonderfully clean beaches where you can enjoy throughout the year as the climate is sub-tropical. Living in Gold Coast which has places like the Dream World, Movie World, Sea World, Wet & Wild and commuting to work in Brisbane, which is only an hour away, can be very enjoyable.

The man-made beach of South Bank beside the river Brisbane makes the city one in a group of selected cities in the world where there is a beach smack in the centre of the city. It attracts large crowds in the day time and offers entertainment to children free of cost. You can leave your kids here, both young and old, and go for shopping as the lifeguards are there to provide them safety up to late hours of the evening.  

Due to the sub-tropical nature of the climate, Brisbane has only a cold and dry winter season instead of a freezing winter. Scottish summers are as warm as they come but last for only a couple of days if you are in luck. The winter temperature in Brisbane may be a little higher than the summer temperature in Scotland while the summer here is a bit humid.   

Some of the inhabitants in Brisbane or Brissie, as it is fondly called, feel that the summer is a bit too steamy. But you may not feel too bothered about it as:

a.      The office, car and the house are all air-conditioned.

b.      The months of January, February and March are the most humid and hot. You can be at the beaches on weekends by as early as 7 am to avoid getting sunburn though it gets a bit warm. You can leave the beach by 10 am for a shopping mall which has air-conditioning. From there, you can go back home and enjoy a glass of fruit juice and a book on a seat under the shade of the verandah.

c.       On the other hand, in UK, you can get stuck inside your home for days because of bad weather. The “bad weather” in Brisbane occurs only in summer when it is hot and sticky, and it frequently rains  during afternoons. But even during this " bad weather" you can enjoy on the beaches and go for jogging sessions in the lovely parks in the early morning. 

d.      Most of the year, excluding the three months of “bad weather” , is fantastic in Brisbane.

e.     The novelty of growing pineapples and bananas in your garden may have been unthinkable earlier and may make you wonder when it will wear off.  

If beaches do not attract you then you can find a large number of 50m long swimming pools which are twice the size than most of the swimming pools you can find in Scotland. 

Another beautiful thing about Brisbane is that the sun rises early at 6.30 am even during the middle of winter. During the winter in Scotland it would be still dark when you get up from bed at 6.30 in the morning, wash your face, have breakfast and go off to work. You can rise with the rising sun here, go for a jog if you are in the mood to, and have breakfast without any hurry and go off to work in the refreshing sunshine. The contrast between this place and any other the place where you come from may quite amaze you.

Even two years after immigrating to Brisbane, you would feel lucky to be living under such a lovely blue sky. Currently, home prices are being held down by a high Australian interest rates, which means that if you're moving in from outside of Australia, there are some real bargains.

High Australian mortgage rates are holding down the property market

Cost of service for the purchase of land forced on the purchaser, rise in speculation of land due to distorted tax policies, geographic limitations imposed on urban properties, availability of government grants and inheritance, and immigration problems all affect the price of a property. The rarely discussed behavioral reaction to changes in the interest rates of mortgage is the prime focus of this article.  

Housing in Australia is a very important consideration and unlike choosing between two cars costing $20,000 and $30,000, the decision to buy a house depends on whether you can afford it and whether 25 percent of the salary can be paid for servicing the mortgage. Undoubtedly high rates of interest for servicing mortgages in the late 1980s, which had reached its peak at 17.0 percent in 1989, had brought down affordability.  

For example, a couple each earning $26,611 on an average, paying 25 percent of what they earned together, would have been able to repay $13,306 on a mortgage for 20 years. This amount could service only $74,880 worth of mortgage in 1989 and $129,000 in 2007. With the average wage of adults being $55,920 at present, the same couple buying a house now would be able to service a mortgage value of $273,000 at 8.05 percent interest by paying 25 percent of their salary or $27,960 per year. 

It means, at present they can afford to service a mortgage almost double of what they could have in 1989. Though the 20 percent increase in wages has made it possible to some extent, the existing low rates of interest are also responsible for this increase in mortgage value. Conventional wisdom that affordability increases with lower rates of interest is strengthened further by this analysis. 

The “25 percent payment of income” rule is based on your capability of being able to make payments on your mortgage. As it takes many years to pay off a mortgage, you should consider as a foresight the increase in earnings over that period to come to a rational conclusion about your total capability to pay off that mortgage over that period.

   

The prevalence of high inflation during 1980s ate into wages, increased prices and increased the nominal rates of interest on loans. A burden of 25 percent of income is imposed by a mortgage that stays constant for a period of 20 years. But the 8 percent increase in wages progressively reduces this burden to 23 percent after the first year, 21 percent after the second year, 20 percent after the third year and so forth. As a matter of fact, the variable interest rate for a mortgage payment taken by people in 1980 would have reduced while their wages would have increased over time. 

    

The initial heavy burden of mortgage repayment would force you to defer on many things like having children, replacing appliances, cars, and furniture and trying to extend credit card debt payments.  The present low annual inflation of 2.4 percent does not provide the same amount of relief automatically as it did earlier even if you have a secure income. Relief from the heavy repayments for mortgage loans may not come as quickly as it did thirty years ago. As the struggle is longer now and living on a single income is quite unthinkable at present.    

Economists will agree that the effect being discussed in this article is the effect of real-life interest rates and not the nominal interest rates which are normally mentioned by lending agencies and banks through advertisements. Real life interest rates depend on inflation that is given by the following mathematical formula:

Real rate = Nominal rate – the rate of inflation

If the nominal rate were 17 percent and the rate of inflation 8 percent in 1989, then the real life rate would have been approximately 9 percent. Presently the nominal rate is 8 percent and the rate of inflation is around 2 percent that makes the real life rate approximately 6 percent. This fall in mortgage interest rates is not the same that the politicians debate about and has no immediate chance of coming down further as it did after 1989. For example, the real life interest rate fell by 4 percent when inflation came down, and nominal interest rates decreased.

As the real life rates have been varying between ten and two percent for the last thirty years, it does not make a good political story and the people in the government like Peter Costello try to avoid talking about it as well as the representatives of the Labor party as they want to avoid any suggestion makes the economy any more complex.

It is certain that no one wants high inflation to ease the burden of mortgage payments for short term gains. Rather the 25 percent and sometimes 30 percent of income rules of repayment should be moderated to make immediate repayment more convenient. It will be convenient if the concepts of nominal and real life interest rates are taken up in literacy programs of financial institutions and schools. But many politicians and parties want you to consider only nominal interest rates while employers do not want the raises in your salary get discounted when considered in real life situations and the union leaders also want to take the credit for negotiating the raises in salary for their members.     

Studies made on economic behavior shows that the education by itself can provide only partial improvement in making decisions. Economists who are experts on behavior believe that people are myopic when making decisions about borrowing as the repayment burden is not given much importance. This type of myopia did not cause much trouble in the 1980s as an increase in wages reduced the burden of repayment on a fixed mortgage. But the present burden of mortgage repayment may remain with you for a longer time as the comparative increase in wages is lesser now.

With politicians shouting about low-interest rates and financial institutions and lenders highlighting their innovative rates of interest for mortgage repayments, it is very hard to change the pattern of consumer behavior. As a matter of fact, the interest rates in Australia are climbing very steeply and may become the highest compared to all other developed countries soon.  

Solutions in fiscal reform such as reverting back to the earlier regime of capital gains tax, abolishing the effect of "negative gear" and the effect of considering depreciation and interest twice on investments on housing, making the "Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority" to encompass non-banking lenders, may be more helpful to consumers. Prohibiting the practice of sales based on commissions where the agents or employees get paid a percentage of the loan amounts that they can sell may be another solution. As per Louise Sylvan, the "Australian Consumers' Association" CEO, this practice brings in corruption, inflation in the prices of property, over-committed borrowers, and finally instability in the financial markets.