The federal government delivered a range of small business-friendly programs and incentives in its recent budget. Under the Energy Bill Relief Fund, eligible small businesses will receive up to $650 in electricity bill relief. Under the Small Business Energy Incentive, businesses with aggregated annual turnover of less than $50 million will be able to deduct … Read more
Commercial vendors and buyers have become more cautious as interest rates have been rising. Nevertheless, there were still more than $17 billion worth of sub-$5 million transactions conducted during the year to May 2023, according to Ray White Commercial Head of Research Vanessa Rader. The asset types that attracted the most activity were: Retail shops … Read more
Scamwatch has urged businesses and consumers to be on the lookout for increased scam activity and to take steps to protect themselves. Criminals use data breaches, such as the 2022 Optus data breach, to target people through phishing emails, phone calls, and SMS or social media messages, according to Scamwatch. To protect yourself, don’t click … Read more
Refinancing cashback deals may become a thing of the past, after several big banks and smaller lenders, including Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Bankwest, announced they planned to phase out the incentive. Now that some institutions have made the first move, it wouldn’t be surprising if other lenders followed suit, because cashback deals can have more … Read more
This is a pretty good time to be a first-home buyer, according to one of Australia’s leading property economists. Ray White Group Chief Economist Nerida Conisbee said there are four things in favour of first-home buyers right now: Property prices are lower than this time last year. Owning has become more appealing because rents are … Read more
HECS-HELP student debt will rise by 7.1% on June 1, in line with the latest inflation rate. That reflects the recent surge in inflation – the increase was only 3.9% in 2022 and 0.6% in 2021. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has advised people to move fast if they want to reduce their loan balances … Read more
The Reserve Bank of Australia has rounded out 2023 with the decision to hold the nation’s cash rate at 4.35%. 2023 hasn’t been an easy year for homeowners or ambitious first-home buyers. The cash rate increased from 3.10% to 4.35% over the course of eleven months in the RBA’s bid to bring inflation back within … Read more
You may have heard the Federal Government last night handed down its 2023/24 Federal Budget. Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ Budget included a number of measures aimed at easing the cost-of-living pressures and improving housing affordability. The challenge the Treasurer faced was to ease pressure many Australians are facing in covering increasing costs without adding to … Read more
The business sector has a stronger balance sheet than before the pandemic, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) latest Financial Stability Review. That finding was based on a study of non-financial businesses’ balance sheets over the three years to June 2022, the most recent period for which the RBA had data. “Aggregate leverage … Read more
A total of $4.74 billion of commercial property transactions were conducted in the first quarter of 2023, 68.2% lower than the year before, according to data from Real Capital Analytics and Ray White. Ray White Commercial Head of Research Vanessa Rader said “a combination of rapidly rising interest rates, difficulty in obtaining finance and sentiment … Read more
