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Vol 12. No.29

Landsburys Independent Accreditation Reports

Economic Overview

	Current	+/-	Movement
$AUS/$US	100.54	+0.36
Cash Rate	4.75	Steady
90 Day Bill	4.90	-0.03
10 Year Bond	5.695	+0.030
ASX 200	4935.8	+54.9

New South Wales Property

• The Coalition plans to revise the NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act and scrap its Part 3A, which gives the Planning Department power over major project approvals.
• The Coalition has said interim measures would be introduced to allow the projects in the planning approval system to be processed.
• Planning Department figures show at the beginning of February that there are 161 new projects in the Part 3A system, at the public exhibition stage or beyond. They had a total capital investment value of $17.7 billion.
• Property projects in the pipeline include several towers at Lend Lease’s Barangaroo urban renewal project on Sydney Harbour, parts of Meriton’s redevelopment of the Channel Seven site in Epping and the Marrickville Metro retail expansion.

• Singapore businessman, Michael Kum, has purchased the Travelodge Docklands in Melbourne for nearly $54 million.
• The four-star, 291-room hotel opened last February and is the only hotel in the Docklands precinct.
• The hotel trades strongly, with occupancy levels in the high 70% range.
• Mr Kum has made a number of hotel acquisitions in the Sydney market in the last couple of years including purchasing Four Points by Sheraton for $185 million in 2009 and Swissotel Sydney early last year for $90 million.

• The QBE Insurance Group and Deloitte have agreed to move their Parramatta offices to the Eclipse Tower in Station Street.
• The agreements have allowed the developers, Leighton Properties and Grosvenor Properties, to start work on the project.
• The Eclipse will have 19 stories and has an end value of about $170 million.
• The two lead tenants will occupy about 70% for the 25,660 square metres of office space.
• QBE will take 12,000 square metres and Deloitte will lease 6,000 square metres.
• Details of the pre-commitments have not been disclosed but the rent is about $400 to $450 per square metre net.

National Property

• A Council of Australia Governments (COAG) report shows that most planning approvals on large residential projects in NSW and Victoria are officially late.
• Data from NSW and Victoria show the majority of approvals for multi-unit residential projects were resolved past the statutory time limits.
• In NSW, only 44% were decided within the time limits. In Victoria, it was 47%.
• Planning authorities in NSW took an average of 137 days to assess medium and high density residential developments with Victoria planning authorities taking 178 days.
• The COAG report also found authorities were slow in dealing with subdivision approvals.