It's not often a post-purchase change of mind makes you money in real estate, but that was precisely the case for the vendors of a one-bedroom property in Sunshine, in NSW's Lake Macquarie.
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They'd purchased the property for $910,000 in March this year, with a view to knocking the existing residence down and building a new one.
But they'd since decided to purchase another project elsewhere, and were merely hoping to recoup their costs with the sale.
Instead the property sold for a whopping $1.52 million at auction, netting them an impressive payday and setting a new suburb record in the process.
"All the interest seemed to be coming in around $1.2 million - they didn't think it would go for over $1.5 million," McGrath Toukley's Chris Smith told Newcastle Herald property report Hamish Geale.
He said the area was becoming increasingly popular with those seeking a holiday home.
The new owners also plan on constructing a new home on the block, which has views to the water.
How to avoid mortgage pain in 2022
In the market for a new home loan? Confused about whether now is the right time to fix your mortgage rate?
According to one expert, there's a strong case to consider doing so sooner rather than later.
That's because there's been a flurry of increases to fixed-rate mortgage products by all of the major banks in just the past month, and that's likely just the start of the pain for new borrowers in the year ahead.
It's all to do with the increasing cost of bank funding, explained Canstar finance expert Steve Mickenbecker, who described the increases as "startling".
"The pace of it is quite startling, I don't think anyone thought it would be this quick," he told Australian Community Media this week.
""[The Reserve Bank of Australia] got rid of the support they had for the bond rate, they said they are no longer going to commit to the 2024 bonds at that 0.1 per cent rate and since then the bond rates have gone back up and the cost of funding has gone up," he explained.
According to modelling conducted by the comparison site, Westpac's increases to its fixed-rate products during October and November could see households paying between $109 and $314 more a month than if they'd fixed their loan a month earlier, depending on the type of loan and product they choose.
Mr Mickenbecker cautioned that the "future is uncertain" but said anyone locking in a rate for one year should almost certainly expect to face higher rates when their term ends in 2022.
"They'll be higher, but how much higher is tricky to say," he said, adding that the "1.99 per cent rate will disappear".
Trees on top
Silly season may be upon us, but that's not the reason why there's a tree on top of this newly-completed Belconnen building.
It was put there as part of developer Geocon's topping out ceremony to mark the fifth and final tower in its Republic Precinct development.
The building, called Nightfall is part of a 1200-apartment development, which began construction in mid-2018.
The precinct is already home to some 3000 residents across the Dusk, Republic and High Society buildings.
With the structure now complete, work will begin on fitting out the 334-apartment tower before residents move in during the second quarter of 2022.
The placing of a tree on top of a structure to mark its completion dates back to a Scandinavian ritual, whereby a tree is placed atop a newly completed structure to appease any tree spirits displaced during its construction.