7 October 2010

Where's all the LDA money going?

| johnboy
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Zed Seselja is asking some interesting questions of the ACT’s monopoly new release land seller, the Land Development Agency:

“There is no shortage of demand for land in the ACT, with prospective buyers camping out to secure a block of land in Canberra’s newest suburbs yet;

— the LDA’s advertising costs have increased almost $700,000 since last financial year;

— selling costs have tripled to almost $4 million, despite the number of blocks released only increasing by around 250 from the previous financial year, and housing affordability continues to decline; and

— Staffing costs have increased from $7.14 million to $9.42 million despite staffing numbers dropping slightly and a new department, Land and Property Services being formed, with 16 positions being transferred to LAPS.

One wonders if there is a good reason for these things?

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The blocks shown as available on the map in Bonner (yes leftover from previous releases) are just the ones which are waiting to be selected via the appointments. They will all go, as there is also a waiting list for more appointments in case some people do not take a block.

Also if you were to call Colliers, I don’t think there are actually any Wright blocks on the market at present.

DeadlySchnauzer9:49 am 08 Oct 10

Available Wright blocks are listed here: http://www.molonglovalley.com.au/wright/block-lot/. I’ve been watching this creep up, but there are still a number of blocks for sale, and interestingly they are all balloted blocks… i guess they save the nicer bigger blocks for auction so those tend to get picked up first.

Afaik Bonner is a similar story, a lot has sold but there are still blocks available according to http://www.lda.act.gov.au/resources/templates/bonner_2/map/. The 50 bonner blocks you refer too are actually a second attempt to sell blocks that didn’t sell in the initial releases, and they have not been sold yet but just set up for over the counter sales appointments (see http://www.lda.act.gov.au/?/bonner2/sales/land_available).

Certainly in neither case has it been an abysmal failure… and i’m not sure what the “standard” rate of un-sold blocks should be (some of these must be people who bought, but then couldn’t get financing etc). But for a supposed land shortage, high demand, people camping out etc, you wouldn’t expect *any* blocks to be sitting on the market for 6 months.

DeadlySchnauzer, not sure where you get your info, but I don’t believe there are currently any Wright/Molonglo blocks on the market (from LDA/Colliers at least).

Even if there are, these are pretty expensive blocks and not necessarily indicative of the overall market, as Developers are generally looking to buy cheaper blocks and build smaller houses for quick turnaround.

A release of 50 cheaper Bonner blocks last week was snapped up in a day.

martin75 said :

Oh my god, Zed actually came up with something that should be looked into.
There’s a first for everything.

Same as monkeys sitting at typewriters – wait long enough and random chance says he’ll finally do something useful.

or FACELESS LDA WOMEN (sorry)

Oh my god, Zed actually came up with something that should be looked into.
There’s a first for everything.

Who are the FACELESS LDA men?

DeadlySchnauzer6:27 pm 07 Oct 10

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that, just quietly, sales aren’t quite up to the media hype. The first molonglo land release still hasn’t sold all blocks (although to be fair its gradually crept up to something like 95% sold now)… but this is after 6 months on the market, so certainly its not the smashing sales success that I think they were expecting. And this is just one small allotment of blocks, they are going to struggle when some of the larger chunks get released.

So yeah there were people camping out for blocks, just apparently not enough people.

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