Queensland housing opportunity

Ok, it's official Queensland residential real estate is the cheapest in Australia.

Wow? That just does not make sense. What a great place to live with our lifestyle choices from vibrant cities to glistening beaches, all on the doorstep of some of the best tourist destinations in the country.
Our cost of living is cheaper than Sydney or Melbourne. Our state is resource rich. Anyone seriously looking for a good job can get one.
So whats the point?
If you want to make some serious money, the rule is buy before the next boom! Of course when the taxi drivers are telling you to buy, it's time to sell.the market today offers some excellent buying pretty much cash-flow neutral or at times positive. You just need to act before the mob and let time do it's work.
In two to five years there will be some massive jumps, confidence restored and the rewards will flow.
What an opportunity? The chance to sell and pay off your mortgage, or fund schooling or retire with independent wealth. The downside is so much less than the upside.
It takes courage to swim against the tide but the scenery can be life changing.
WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY NOW....buy a few and let leverage, the taxman and tenant pay your bills.

David Evans Carbon Accounting Modeller Says Its a Scam

Dr David Evans’ address to the Anti-Carbon-Tax rally, Perth Australia, 23 March 2011.

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen.

The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence,  was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools and liars out of our politicians.

Let’s set a few things straight.

The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now cheat and lie outrageously to maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.

Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered.These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.

The disagreement comes about what happens next.

The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet, which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a greenhouse gas.

This is the core idea of every official climate model: for each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three – so two thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors), only one third is due to extra carbon dioxide.

I'll bet you didn't know that. Hardly anyone in the public does, but it’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements, lies, and misunderstanding spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism. Which is why the alarmists keep so quiet about it and you've never heard of it before. And it tells you what a poor job the media have done in covering this issue.

Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot-spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10km up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, 80s, and 90s, the weather balloonsfound no hot-spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.

This evidence first became clear around the mid 1990s.

At this point official “climate science” stopped being a science. You see, in science empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

There are now several independent pieces of evidence showing that the earth responds to the warming due to extra carbon dioxide by dampening the warming. Every long-lived natural system behaves this way, counteracting any disturbance, otherwise the system would be unstable. The climate system is no exception, and now we can prove it.

But the alarmists say the exact opposite, that the climate system amplifies any warming due to extra carbon dioxide, and is potentially unstable. Surprise surprise, their predictions of planetary temperature made in 1988 to the US Congress, and again in 1990, 1995, and 2001, have all proved much higher than reality.

They keep lowering the temperature increases they expect, from 0.30C per decade in 1990, to 0.20C per decade in 2001, and now 0.15C per decade – yet they have the gall to tell us “it’s worse than expected”. These people are not scientists. They over-estimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide, selectively deny evidence, and now they cheat and lie to conceal the truth.

One way they cheat is in the way they measure temperature.

The official thermometers are often located in the warm exhaust of air conditioning outlets, over hot tarmac at airports where they get blasts of hot air from jet engines, at wastewater plants where they get warmth from decomposing sewage, or in hot cities choked with cars and buildings. Global warming is measured in tenths of a degree, so any extra heating nudge is important. In the US, nearly 90% of official thermometers surveyed by volunteers violate official siting requirements that they not be too close to an artificial heating source. Nearly 90%! The photos of these thermometers are on the Internet; you can get to them via the corruption paper at my site, sciencespeak.com. Look at the photos, and you’ll never trust a government climate scientist again.

They place their thermometers in warm localities, and call the results “global” warming. Anyone can understand that this is cheating. They say that 2010 is the warmest recent year, but it was only the warmest at various airports, selected air conditioners, and certain car parks.

Global temperature is also measured by satellites, which measure nearly the whole planet 24/7without bias. The satellites say the hottest recent year was 1998, and that since 2001 the global temperature has leveled off.

So it’s a question of trust.

If it really is warming up as the government climate scientists say, why do they present only the surface thermometer results and not mention the satellite results? And why do they put their thermometers near artificial heating sources? This is so obviously a scam now.

So what is really going on with the climate?

The earth has been in a warming trend since the depth of the Little Ice Age around 1680. Human emissions of carbon dioxide were negligible before 1850 and have nearly all come after WWII, so human carbon dioxide cannot possibly have caused the trend. Within the trend, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation causes alternating global warming and cooling for 25 – 30 years at a go in each direction. We have just finished a warming phase, so expect mild global cooling for the next two decades.

We are now at an extraordinary juncture.

Official climate science, which is funded and directed entirely by government, promotes a theory that is based on a guess about moist air that is now a known falsehood. Governments gleefully accept their advice, because the only way to curb emissions are to impose taxes and extend government control over all energy use. And to curb emissions on a world scale might even lead to world government — how exciting for the political class!

A carbon tax?

Even if Australia stopped emitting all carbon dioxide tomorrow, completely shut up shop and went back to the stone age, according to the official government climate models it would be cooler in 2050 by about 0.015 degrees. But their models exaggerate tenfold – in fact our sacrifices would make the planet in 2050 a mere 0.0015 degrees cooler!

Sorry, but you’ve been had.

Finally, to those of you who still believe the planet is in danger from our carbon dioxide emissions: sorry, but you’ve been had. Yes carbon dioxide a cause of global warming, but it’s so minor it’s not worth doing much about.

————————————————————————————

Dr David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The area of human endeavor with the most experience and sophistication in dealing with feedbacks and analyzing complex systems is electrical engineering, and the most crucial and disputed aspects of understanding the climate system are the feedbacks. The evidence supporting the idea that CO₂ emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006, causing Evans to move from being a warmist to a skeptic.

Interest rate rise threats

What on earth is wrong with our economists? They are claiming the need for increased rates to combat higher than expected inflation.
Why didn't they expect higher inflation? Higher costs are blatantly obvious to every household along with a poorer standard of living, that's real! Inflation has been caused in the large part to reckless utility increases which have occurred because the greedy hand of government just takes more and more. Why? to waste on pet projects that no-one asked for and no-one wants.
Lets be clear the cost of fuel and food increases has not been caused by any run away demand. The demand if anything is dropping with our standard of living. These increases have been thrust upon us via poor statesmanship.
Its time every politician and local government representative got it through their heads, we have had enough of the greed grab. Its gone and they better start to perform or they will thrown out as well they should be.

Don't focus on interest rates - focus on HOW we can lower power, water, fuel, rates and food costs to a world parity level such as we had three years ago.

Its not the GFC fault- its poor leadership and grandiose waste. I believe we have all had enough.

PEST CONTROL - who is responsible?

The terminology ‘pest control’ can cover many different types of pest and vermin, such as:

·       Fleas

·       Cockroaches

·       Ants

·       Spiders (i.e. Redbacks)

·       Rats & Mice

·       Snakes & Possums

·       Bees & Wasps

·       White ants

All of these pests and vermin at some stage may become evident in rental properties… So who is responsible for pest control?

In many States the legislation relating to pest control can be very unclear and is often open to interpretation. 

A tenant is responsible for keeping the property clean, while the owner is responsible for maintaining the property in a safe state of repair, fit for the tenant to reside.

There are also many local types of council who enforce health and safety by-laws for residential property owners to undertake pest control on an annual basis for pest and vermin, namely cockroaches.

The only pest that is clearly the tenant’s responsibility is fleas.  The presence of fleas is a result of the tenant owning a pet that is not directly related to the maintenance of the property.  When a tenant vacates the property it is a condition of their tenancy agreement to undertake flea treatment control.

As a managing agent we appreciate that many of the listed pests can be eradicated by simple supermarket products, such as inspect spray, baits and traps, which would be our first recommendation to the tenant. 

However, if a tenant is concerned about their safety then it would need to be addressed by the property owner.

Pest Control Summary:

• Cockroaches can be treated under a 12 month warranty.
• Ants are a difficult pest to eradicate and would only pose a concern if they were harmful.
• Spiders can be treated under a 12 month warranty and should be actioned quickly if the spider is harmful – i.e. redbacks.
• Rats & mice can be treated with baits.  It is important to eradicate these pests as they can cause serious damage to appliances and internal electrical wiring, costing far more than the treatment cost.
• Snakes can be a scary animal to remove.  Possums can also be a nuisance pest if they start nesting in the roof, which can result in property damage.  Wildlife specialists are the best point of contact to assist in removing these from the property. 
• Bees & Wasps can become aggressive and dangerous if their nest is in danger.  The treatment of bees and wasps is a concern if the tenant is allergic to them.
• White ant activity in a rental property should be checked at least annually by the owner.  

All other pests would most often become the responsibility of the property owner, with the exception of it being clearly proven that the presence of the pest was caused from the tenant’s lack of cleanliness or poor house-keeping. If the tenant was not disposing of perishable rubbish or was undertaking activities that increased the presence of pests it could be argued that it is a tenant responsibility.

Anzac day

LEST WE FORGET A soldier is someone, who at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to their country for an amount up to, and including, their life! That is an honor, and there are way too many people in this country today who no longer understand that fact! Copy and paste this if you are thankful for your freedom. THANK ALL OUR DEFENCE FORCE .......MONDAY - ANZAC DAY

David's March 2011 - Market Comment.

2011 has proven to be a difficult period.

Sales volume is back by as much as 50%, with prices starting to press 10% under last years, represented by drops of $10,000 to $30,000. This is very significant, and depending on which side of the transaction you’re on, it could be good or bad.

For buyers, this is a real opportunity to secure some excellent property at very realistic prices. If you are selling and buying, it is an opportunity to reduce your changeover costs significantly and, potentially be fortunate to re-buy favourably - basically good either way.

The real difficulty lies with sellers forced to sell now through all sorts of circumstance such as job relocation, job insecurity, partnership split to name just a few. For many of today’s sellers the decision becomes a choice of, "do I want to lose $$$? What are the options?"

Within 5km of our David Deane office, 1200 homes are listed for sale, with around only 100 selling each month.  More precisely, 1100 don't sell. That’s 92%!

These homes are priced right across the price spectrum, so competition for buyers is fierce.

Homes that are selling are either extraordinarily well presented, neat, tidy and desirable, or, they have an obvious price advantage over the 1-200 homes they are directly competing against.

This means a very experienced agent with great marketing, communication and negotiating skills, working hard for you, is essential!

The truth is, most offices don't sell enough homes, or attract enough buyers, to make the grade, let alone be able to properly serve their client’s needs.

From the outside looking in, it certainly appears most agents are much the same. This is not the case, as you’ll discover, if you look at the sales results and the real numbers of each agency.

We as a team are working harder than ever on solutions and client focus.  We want the very best result that we can achieve by leaving no stone unturned for our clients, and especially, our sellers!

Our bright, new office is now fully operational and well worth a visit – just some minor finishing touches to go. As a result, we are attracting significantly more enquiry from buyers and tenants, and that is uplifting to us all. 

We have some friendly new staff on board to handle the load

We have a positive view of where we are and where we want to be – That is, to best serve our client base.

I personally invite you to call in and check us out.

David Deane