Showing posts with label bcc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bcc. Show all posts

Sunday, August 31, 2014

South Brisbane Redevelopment

If you are thinking of buying in South Brisbane, you should first look at the Kurilpa Urban Renewal Master Plan, published by the Brisbane City Council:
This Plan will have a big impact on views, and it also gives an idea of how many apartments will be built in the next decade in this area.  See video.


Sunday, March 4, 2012

Campbell Newman and Apartments

Campbell Newman, when at Brisbane City Council, introduced the "parity factor", in relation to rates paid to the Council by Brisbane apartment owners.  Until this time, all rates in Brisbane were calculated based on the unimproved value of the land (regardless of the house or buildings on the land).  Under the "parity factor", apartment owners are now assessed taxes at a high rate than house owners.  In effect, house owners are taxed based on the unimproved value of the land, but for apartment owners, the tax takes into account the improvements on the land.  This doubled or tripled the rates for a number of apartment owners.

For houses, if I build a $2 million house on land worth $400,000, and you build a $250,000 house on the block of land next door also worth $400,000, we both pay the same rates in Brisbane.  But if you build an apartment building with 8 one-bedroom apartments, then the rates over all for those apartments will be higher than for the $2 million house.

I guess Campbell Newman will be looking at ways to increase taxes if he becomes Premier, and I doubt that he will be friendly to apartment owners.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Rent Money is Dead Money - part 3

Another interesting comment from a reader regarding the prior post Rent Money is Dead Money:

I am a number of months into my apartment owning experience, and your colum on buy versus rent this weekend was very interesting. 
 
It has surprised me how relatively expensive apartment living is in comparison to houses.   Unencumbered by the facts, you would think that apartment living would be cheaper due to massive economies of scale:
 
·         Two pools supported by 400 units not one pool by one house
·         Four large garbage collections from four points rather than traversing a neighbourhood with 400 different pickups – council gets the benefit of this one – and nobody would use tip vouchers.
·         Maintenance of larger grounds, but offset by 400 units supporting, versus grounds per house
·         Economies of scale on hot water heating by using much larger units
·         Economies of scale on water requirements
·         Economies of scale on heating and cooling due to insulation from two sides, roof and floor not being open to environment.
 
Obviously the above benefits are eroded by the cost and maintenance of elevators, the onsite manager, profit margin for developer, security, etc.
 
For my apartment, annual fees for rates etc are not $5k per your note but $9k, comprising $6k body corporate and insurance, $2k rates, and $1k water.
 
The $6k for the body corporate was not particularly out of line for similar units when I was looking around.
 
The $2k for rates is just as a result of robbery by Brisbane City Council.  My home rates are only $1.4k.  Rates for my apartment should be only $1k but a 2.1 parity factor was put on by the Council when they went through that rate adjustment exercise.
 
Obviously at home in a house, I have no body corporate, but realistically I should consider the $45 I pay a fortnight for lawns mowed as equivalent, and I look after my own pool.
 
So I am paying $1.2k/yr for lawns mowed, if I got the pool looked after I am guessing that would be $40 per month or so.  Say that’s $2k per year.  Home insurance is probably $600 per annum, can't tell as it is bundled with contents.  There are other costs with the pool, all the chemicals, the pumps/chlorinators etc and some provision for outdoor maintenace , say another $1k per year.  So in fact that is $3.6k per year, maybe a bit higher than I thought it would be.  And there are probably other episodic costs that I haven’t been quite fair to my unit on.  I just had to spend $3k to get my home pool fence up to spec.  Maybe the comparison is not as bad as I first thought.  If I am honest there would be other expenses on my house that would be covered by Body Corp for equivalent unit.
 
But still, even with all this, it seems evident that the apartment is still more expensive than house and all those economies of scale are eroded.
 
Obviously the other cost savings that you really need to be taking with an apartment are as follows:
 
·         Dropping Gym memberships and using shared facilities at the common areas.
·         Dumping at least one car – that would give a pile of savings, that are only going to get higher.
 
I don’t see the power bill for my unit, but this is an area where I suspect apartments are losing out to houses.  I've had for over a year solar hot water and solar panels for elec gen on the roof.  These have paybacks of around 5 years or so based on current elec price and are only going to get shorter payback as power bills increase.  How are apartments getting onto the bandwagon of sustainability.  I am sure it is impossible to get a pile of owners to cough up more money to install solar hot water or solar panels.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Oaks Fined for Car Park Leasing

A newspaper reports that the Council fined Oaks $25,000 for renting our carparks to non residents, in breach of development conditions.

"BRISBANE: One of the largest building management agencies in the CBD has been fined $15,000 for illegally leasing out car parks to inner-city workers.

Brisbane City Council has fined The Oaks Group for unlawfully leasing residential carparks to commuters after an investigation which City News understands lasted several months.

According to its website, The Oaks Group arranges short-term bookings for eight unit blocks in the CBD. Car parking spaces meant for long-term residents have instead been leased to inner-city workers for up to $5000 a year. Councillor David Hinchliffe (Central) welcomed the penalty and said he believed the practice was widespread and was “potentially just the tip of the iceberg”.

He said he believed senior managers in both the private and public sectors had paid for carparks made available in contravention of the Council’s planning approvals. “If you’re operating a commercial carpark, then you need to be zoned and approved for a commercial carpark,” he said. “One carparking space can generate easily around $5000 a year in revenue for the company, 200 car spaces are worth $1 million in revenue.

“My understanding is that apartments are being rented out without carparks so that the company can lease out the carparks separately to commuters, encouraging more people to drive to work and park and adding to congestion.”

Brisbane City Council failed to answer several questions about the practice before City News’ deadline. When contacted for comment, an Oaks spokeswoman replied: “We are not at liberty to respond to that matter.”

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Lawsuit Against Council over Brisbane Apartment Rates

BRISBANE unit owners have launched a Supreme Court challenge against the validity of the Brisbane City Council's rating parity factor scheme.

The scheme was introduced by Lord Mayor Campbell Newman in the 2008-09 Brisbane City Council Budget and has been strongly opposed by unit owners, particularly in inner city areas.

Paul Cassels and Darryl Penfold, the president and vice-president of the Brisbane Association for Rates Equity (BARE), filed documents in the Supreme Court in which they seek a court order declaring the new rates scheme unlawful and invalid. The action has been brought by Mr Cassels and Mr Penfold on behalf of all BARE members, who are owners of lots in community titles schemes in Brisbane.

Outside court Mr Cassels said the Lord Mayor had tried to set the rest of Brisbane against unit owners by declaring they were millionaire "penthouse owners".

He said that wasn't true and the BARE was made up of average people who were opposed to rate hikes of up to 500 per cent. "The actions of the Lord Mayor have been disgusting," he said.

Mr Cassels said he hoped the Lord Mayor would reconsider his stand before the matter had to go to a court hearing. He predicted the issue would be a major factor in the next state elections.

Mr Cassels said the parity factor was a controversial rating mechanism that dramatically increased the general rates on thousands of units and townhouses throughout the city along with commercial and retail strata title property.

He said while the initial impact of the scheme would be felt most in inner city and near city areas, the exponential value formula on which the scheme was based meant that every year more and more units throughout Brisbane would be automatically "caught." BARE has already been instrumental in a substantial re-working of the scheme.

However, BARE has made it clear that it wants the scheme dropped and the rates cap on owner-occupied CTS property (also removed last year as part of the parity scheme) reinstated immediately.

Source: Courier Mail