Blogs for NAB
The brief: NAB engaged APM to create a content strategy covering aspects of property investing. These form part of over 200 blogs written for NAB and the NAB owned UBank over the past six years.
Copy sample:
Is your property right for a subdivision?
Subdividing offers a simple, compelling logic. Take a large property, split it, sell one half – or both – and make twice what you would if you’d sold the property as a whole. While this sounds simple on paper, it’s generally a complex and challenging undertaking that needs a lot of things to be in place to ensure success. So before you carve up your backyard or buy that knockdown house on a big block work out if your current or future investment property has the following features.
A step-by-step guide to knocking down and rebuilding
You love where you live but no matter how many ways you look at it you just can’t make that renovation work. How about the knock-down and rebuild option? It means no more space constraints and you can put that lap pool in the lounge room like you always wanted! No, but seriously, there’s plenty to know before you start the demolition so read on for our step-by-step how-to guide to knocking down and rebuilding.
Upgrading the family home
Your bathroom has more cracks in it than a TV soap opera plot and that 70s kitchen is not going to go away any time soon. And then there’s that concrete slab that passes for a backyard. Something needs to be done but the reality is that few things test a relationship more than a renovation. If this sounds like you, then perhaps it’s time to consider upgrading to a new home. The following article considers some questions around the transition, and managing the purchase and finance.
Blogs for UBank
Andrew Pegler Media worked on Ubank’s content strategy for over four years. We wrote a weekly plain English, educational blog covering domestic and international economics and finance issues and conceived and wrote numerous “how to” guides appropriate to the Ubank audience. APM also contributed to Ubank’s Twitter feed and Facebook posts and Andrew Pegler appeared on television as a brand spokesperson.
China’s first onshore corporate default
And the silver lining is?
A couple of weeks ago a Shanghai solar company went belly-up, owing US$14 million. China’s first onshore corporate default was rapidly followed by the collapse of a property developer who owed much, much more including US$110 million in illegal borrowings from the ’shadow banking sector‘. As the name implies, this is banking in the shadows of financial legislation. It’s kinda unregulated and has sprung up in response to the Chinese government’s efforts to slow real estate prices by tightening credit controls. Hungry developers, who refuse to take no for an answer, have gone underground. Whispering into cracks in the wall, they’ve walked off with truck-loads of money at exorbitant interest rates (18–36%). It’s basically gambling on real estate prices rising faster than the rate of interest they have to pay. Now that’s a very hot property market! Bubble anyone?
Real estate represents 16% of China’s GDP. As with every economy, its tentacles stretch into many corners. The collapse of a property developer has elevated the volume on chatter about the systemic risk to China’s financial system. Specifically, the fear is about what’s known as ‘contagion’. This is the rapid, hard-to-predict, panic-driven spread of a financial crisis. It usually rises from a series of vicious cycles, which form when confidence in a country’s corporate sector to repay its debts goes south. Mass bankruptcies anyone? …..continues