Property exposed companies have reported "tremendously successful" and "best ever" results thanks to the booming housing market.
Developer Mirvac saw its full year profit spike 220 per cent to $447 million dollars.
Shareholders will receive a final dividend of 4.6 cents a share, taking the full year payout to 9 cents unfranked.
Strong residential sales lifted the result, with a total $1.2 billion of exchanged pre-sales contracts in hand and a slightly better than forecast 2,482 properties settled.
Chief executive Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz says the year has been "tremendously successful" and has set the company up for the future.
That future is very focused on building apartments to feed what it believes will continue to be high demand, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne.
Chief investment officer Brett Draffin says the strong sales and price momentum seen over the past financial year is set to continue, albeit at a "slightly more moderate level."
He is not concerned about the flood of units that is expected to come onto the market in the near term.
"Fundamentally increased stock levels are insufficient to overcome the national undersupply, there is a high level of activity from offshore buyers in select locations and product types," he told investors.
"We expect demand volumes to continue to grow driven by tight rental vacancy population growth and a strengthening of the economy."
Mirvac has spent $248 million on new sites, two-thirds of these acquisitions were in NSW, less than a fifth were in Victoria, and the remainder in Queensland and Western Australia.
Half of the lots to be released this year are in Sydney, and almost all of them are units.
Mirvac believes the major acquisitions it has made will see residential development drive earnings from two years time onwards.
Mortgage broker boosts earnings
Mortgage broker Mortgage Choice has also benefitted from the fever that has swept the residential property market over the past year-and-a-half, boasting a best ever full-year result.
Full-year net profit rose 6 per cent to $19.85 million, and cash profit jumped 19 per cent to $18.7 million.
The final dividend was boosted to 8 cents a share, fully-franked.
The company says it "managed to capitalise on the industry tailwinds and significantly grow its core business."
The business wrote $12.2 billion in loan approvals, which is almost 20 per cent higher on the prior year, and the loan book rose to $47.4 billion.
Chief executive Michael Russell says it is the best result so far for the company.
"We have embraced the opportunities that the strong market has presented us with and managed to deliver some of our best financial results to date," he said.
The company says it is well on its way to achieving its goal of becoming a recognised diversified financial services provider.
"We will continue to focus on our growth and diversification moving forward."
THOUSANDS of Chinese investors piled into a property expo in Sydney’s Town Hall on the weekend as analysts tip overseas buyers will keep the city’s inner city apartment market booming for the next two years.
Close to 50 companies jockeyed for the attention of the cashed up Chinese buyers, with apartment projects being spruiked by development giants Greenland Holding Group, MAB Corporation and Frasers Property Australia
About 50 companies jockeyed for the attention of the cashed-up Chinese buyers, with apartment projects being spruiked by development giants Greenland Holding Group, MAB Corporation and Frasers Property Australia.
The property frenzy came as Sydney and Melbourne kicked off the spring auction season with strong results, posting clearance rates of 83.4 per cent and 75.3 per cent respectively on total sales of $545.7 million, according to preliminary figures released by Australian Property Monitors.
“The (auction) results were extraordinarily strong,” said APM senior economist Andrew Wilson. “The Sydney market just keeps rising. Certainly there is no sign of a waning of activity.”
He said a lot of the buyer action was driven by investors rather than owner-occupiers.
At the Sydney property expo Maggie Wang bought a house in Bellevue Hill, in Sydney’s east, for about $6m.
Ms Wang, who migrated three years ago, ran an IT and property development company in China and had recently started a wedding planner business in Australia. She said Chinese interest in Australian property was about more than just making money.
“People like the lifestyle, the country and the environment, it’s not just about investment,” Ms Wang said.
Another buyer, 26-year-old Crystal, bought a home in one of Sydney’s wealthiest suburbs, Vaucluse, for more than $5m, with plans to buy more Australian investment properties.
The expo also featured agencies, such as ABC World, which give Chinese investors advice on migrating to Australia through avenues such as the Significant Investor Visa. The visa, implemented by the former federal Labor government, allows foreigners who invest more than $5m in Australia the potential for permanent residency.
Black Diamondz director Monika Tu, who represents wealthy Chinese looking to buy Australian homes, said the visa’s introduction had led to a surge in interest for local trophy homes worth more than $5m.
Ms Tu said inquires to her agency from Chinese property hunters had increased by about 50 per cent this year.
Also at the expo, one of China’s largest developers, Greenland Holding Group, held expressions of interest for its second local project, the $200m Lucent apartment tower in North Sydney, while Singaporean-backed Frasers Property Australia marketed apartments at its $2 billion Central Park project at Sydney’s inner-city Chippendale.
The high investor demand for off-the-plan apartments is expected to keep Sydney’s inner-city market in boom mode for the next two years, according to forecaster BIS Shrapnel.
BIS Shrapnel said about 5800 apartments were under construction in Sydney while about 11,500 new apartments would be completed over the next three years — the biggest number in the city’s history. CBRE managing director of residential projects David Milton said the uplift in interest from Chinese investors allowed local apartment developments to stack up financially.
