Ambition

In the face of continuing rodent infested news for housing, what better time for BIS Shrapnel to come out with one of their housing outlooks, predictions, forecasts, whatever.

One seems to roll out every quarter, under a different guise, reheating essentially the same information. Basically with the job of communicating from the sector, to the naive, through a lazy media, how awesome shit is gonna get.

The equivalent of an agent reassuring you: "you'll never lose in this location."

And if you are naive, or just twelfth man on the deal team, last to know - this one rolled out after being commissioned by QBE LMI. Yes sir, they're a big old issuer of mortgage insurance. Needless to say house prices are going up. So don't delay, buy one for Mum, one for Dad and one for QBE.

In the face of all common sense, you can make 13% in Hobart over the next 3 years, or you could go backwards even further, like some Hobart residences previously featured in this blog.

Which brings me to an anecdotal point of interest. The meager research done for this blog keeps revealing house after house swallowed, then regurgitated back onto the market within 18 months, in fact some, like this 3x1 in Launceston must have a seriously bad case of feng shui, it's barely six months between previous sale and re-listing.

Six months ago it was yours for $314,000. Now you can have it for $389,500. Some may say that's ambitious, but hey, if I'd lived in a house and farted in it every day for six months, I wouldn't dream of selling it to the next guy for less than 75k more than I paid.

That's if I'd ignored all the discounting going on around me.

Someone with a less ambitious bent is offloading this 3x1 in Burnie.

It's going for a dirt cheap $279,000, which is nearly 7x income for Burnie, but August last year it was snapped up for $265,000. Coincidentally, the difference between those two figures is the exact amount of the first home buyers boost in August last year.

The house is also currently listed as a rental. What was that familiar cry in the midst of the first home buyer's boost lunacy?

"Get the grant, live in it for six months, then rent it out! I'm on the property ladder, bitches!"

Just watch that loose rung.