Paul Castran - CEO - Castran Gilbert

Here is a story from the Sydney Morning Herald about my brother John, and his lucky escape in New Zealand. Read the full story here: http://www.smh.com.au/world/avalanche-victim-shut-himself-down-to-survive-20090724-dw62.html

AT FIRST the Melbourne multi-millionaire John Castran thought he had escaped the avalanche unscathed, unaware that metres away his Sydney skiing companion was dead.

Buried under more than 1.8 metres of snow on a New Zealand mountain range, Mr Castran, 53, could still move his arms and legs. But then the snow shifted and he was crushed.

Pinned beneath the overwhelming weight of what moments earlier had been featherweight powder snow, Mr Castran realised he did not have enough oxygen to yell for help.

The real estate agent survived the avalanche at Ragged Range, near Methven, west of Christchurch, yesterday, but a NSW businessman, 61, whose name has not been made public, was killed.

As Mr Castran ran out of air, he too thought he would perish under the ice. "You choke with the snow, you can’t breathe, you’re suffocating … it’s like being poured into plaster of Paris. The only thing I could move was my tongue, to push the snow away from in front of my mouth.

"I thought: ‘I’ve only got a little bit of air here, I’ve just got to use all the air very, very carefully’. So I just shut myself down totally."

Mr Castran had been on a heli-skiing trip with his son Angus, 23, as well as the NSW man and two guides from the tour company Alpine Guides.

The snow had been perfect, the sky clear blue, and the group had completed four ski runs before their chartered helicopter dropped them at the remote Arrowsmith Ranges.

"It’s one of the most spectacular places you’ve ever seen, absolutely breathtaking country up in the ranges about 6000 to 8500 feet [2600 metres] above sea level," Mr Castran said.

The man who was killed when the avalanche hit about 1pm had said to Mr Castran: "You don’t get much closer to heaven than this."

The first guide skied ahead of the group to check for danger, then signalled for the men to follow.

"I was skiing down and all of a sudden the whole side of the mountain just let go," Mr Castran said.

"I thought I might be able to out-ski it and ski off to the side, but the whole thing was happening so quickly and the snow went straight over the top of me."

A dull rumble like thunder signalled that avalanche warnings issued for the area that day had been accurate.

"The first thing that comes over you is just this incredible adrenalin, and you want to scream. But if I screamed I was going to use up too much oxygen," Mr Castran said.

"I thought: ‘I’ve just got to be smart’. And I was very lucky that I could just turn my mind off and put myself into another place."

As the air drained away it became "frighteningly peaceful" under the snow. About 30 metres from where Mr Castran lay, his son had dug himself out from waist-high snow and was using a search and rescue beacon to find his father.

Angus said the tour group had been trained by guides to find each other using beacons they had pinned to their chests.

One of the guides was able to find the dead man within five minutes. He was free within "seven to eight" minutes, but efforts to revive him failed.

A tour guide and director of Methven Heliski, Kevin Boekholt, said: "He was around a metre down and he had his head up and he had no snow in his mouth. He was under the snow but there’s a lot of air in snow. He shouldn’t have died."

It took Angus and the second guide about 15 minutes to find Mr Castran’s position. They used avalanche probes to feel for him beneath the snow and a rescue shovel to dig him out.

Angus said he feared the worst when they pulled his father from the snow, unconscious and blue.

Speaking from a motel room last night, Mr Castran said he was uninjured apart from a black eye and having "the stuffing taken out" of him.

He said he and his son were experienced heliskiers and their companion, who they had met that day, regularly travelled the world for the adventure of the high-risk sport.

Heres an interesting article about developers who are spending up to $100,000 to help buyers imagine they’ve already moved in.

http://www.domain.com.au/Public/Article.aspx?id=1228585093054&index=NationalIndex&headline=Dressed%20in%20show

Below is an extract:

Discounts on new apartments, deals to pay stamp duty for buyers, special offers galore . . . With developers desperate for buyers of new apartment projects as the banks continue to rein in credit and with many consumers lacking the confidence to actually commit, there’s still one great weapon left in their armoury: the display suite.

Fitted out with top-quality designer furniture, painted in the latest stylish colour palettes, decorated often with original artwork and regularly finished down to the last detail with cutlery, glasses and plates, it’s guaranteed to leave every potential buyer salivating.

"Apartments look so different when they’re empty to when they’re well-furnished," says Andrew Finlayson of developer Carrington, with penthouses for sale at Kensington apartment complex Capella and Wahroonga’s Beumont both beautifully fitted out by stylists.

"It sets the mood and feel, and shows off the architecture of an apartment and it helps people get the sense of how much space is available."

Selling tools

In today’s soft property market, the chief executive of the developers’ lobby Urban Taskforce Australia, Aaron Gadiel, says display suites have never been more important as marketing tools. Today developers are under huge pressure to sell as many apartments as they can off the plan because of the credit crunch tightening bank finance.

"They’re not able to borrow as much as previously, so a good display suite is vital to enable them to sell as soon as possible," Gadiel says. "You’re seeing a lot more developers at the moment using them and their look, feel and quality are now much more important than ever."

At Mirvac’s new Springdale development in Killara, the display apartment cost between $80,000 and $100,000 to be fully furnished and decorated. Marketing director James Bell says the outlay, with apartments still for sale priced from $1,025,000 for two bedrooms and from $1.03 million for three, is absolutely worthwhile.

"If you’ve got good design, good finishes and a good location, it only makes your product even more attractive," he says.

At Beumont, where the three-bedroom-plus-study, three-bathroom penthouse is for sale at $2.5 million, spending about $80,000 on the display styled by Coco Republic was similarly worthwhile. By the same token, the fit-out of the three-bedroom-plus-study, two-bathroom Capella penthouse at $2.2 million was worth slightly less.

"You can fill a place up with utilitarian furniture but really you want people to feel they can see themselves in the space," Finlayson says.

"And you furnish according to the taste of your target demographic."

How to read a display suite

It’s all very well to fall in love with the look of an apartment display suite but don’t forget: love can be blind. Craig Yelland and Ian Briggs of Plus Architecture advise:

1. Take a tape measure.
2. Understand how an apartment is measured - mostly from mid-wall to the middle of the party wall.
3. Confirm the ceiling heights in the display suite are the same as in the end product.
4. Check the size of the beds. Double beds make rooms look bigger because they are smaller but many people assume they’re queens.
5. Work out whether your fridge will fit in the fridge well.
6. Don’t assume what you see is what you’ll get. What are the standard finishes and optional extras? Ask lots of questions to find out exactly what you’re buying.
7. Check what you can’t see. Are the walls strong enough to hold a plasma television? Test the firmness of the vanity basin.
8. Ask if there are enough power points in every room. In bathrooms and kitchens particularly, adding extras can end up costing thousands.
9. Make sure the lift is big enough to fit your couch and fridge.
10. Don’t forget to check other items such as the communal gym and pool, strata fees, location and local amenities.

Paul Castran.

Two of Australia’s biggest residential developers have called the bottom of the housing market, saying some life should return to the troubled sector next year.

Billionaire apartment developer Harry Triguboff and the listed Mirvac Group said signs of growth in demand were emerging.
It runs counter to a report this week from AMP chief economist Shane Oliver, who said Australia’s overvalued house prices could fall 10-15 per cent next year.
Mr Triguboff, founder and owner of the country’s biggest apartment builder Meriton, completed and sold 1000 apartments this year, well down on the 3000 a year built during the boom in 2002, The Weekend Australian reports.
Next year, he hopes to build 1500.
While Mr Triguboff said he “always met the market” when conditions cooled, he expected Meriton’s prices to rise 10 per cent next year underpinned by the government stimulus of rising rents and the lack of supply.
“I don’t think we have to worry, we have such help from the Government,” he said, referring to Canberra’s $14,000 grant for established homes and $21,000 for newly constructed homes announced in October.
“Petrol has come down, income tax has come down. Some people will lose their jobs, sure, but let’s talk about the ones who won’t.”
AMP’s Mr Oliver said an increase in unemployment posed a significant threat to house prices. AMP forecasts the jobless rate will rise from 4.3 per cent to 6.5 per cent in 2010.
Mirvac Group chairman James MacKenzie said the company was starting to see “what we hope are early signs that the residential market, and consequent demand for Mirvac product, being stimulated”, though he was cautious, given the state of the market.
He also cited the Federal Government’s boost to the first home-buyers grant, the cuts in interest rates and measures in the NSW Government’s mini-budget as factors.

Read the full article from Jessica Irvine and Turi Condon of Perth Now here:

http://www.realestate.com.au/doc/Resources/News/market-going-up.htm

Paul Castran

This week’s interest rate cut is expected to lead to an investor resurgence.

With the arrival of spring, they started emerging from their winter bunkers, scouring every neighbourhood, on the prowl for the easy kill. As December broke and interest rates fell again this week, they became bolder and began pacing, waiting and watching for their weakened prey.

And now, finally, they’ve begun to pounce. “Yes, at last we’re seeing evidence of investors returning to the apartments market,” says John Edwards, managing director of residential property researchers Residex. “There’s real activity now from the investment community and we’re predicting we’ll soon see that translated into a lot more sales.”

The latest rate drop in the cash rate this week, a further 1 percentage point to 4.25 per cent, is expected to further lure the investment hunters. “It will have an effect over time, especially if the rates stay permanently down,” says Australian Property Monitors’ senior economist Liam O’Hara.

It’s amazing to see them stalk in terrain that otherwise looks so parched and barren but the experts are adamant: with falling interest rates, rising rents and the continuing sharemarket volatility, the conditions are perfect for the lean and mean to make an absolute killing.

Read the full article from Susan Wellings of the Sydney Morning Herald  here:

http://www.domain.com.au/Public/Article.aspx?id=1228257280539&index=NationalIndex&headline=Back%20on%20the%20prowl

Paul Castran

Castran Gilbert are at the forefront of technology in Real Estate sales. Our Toorak Road office provides a location and profile second to none. Our sales force is the largest single office operation in Melbourne with 22 sales people.

Paul Castran his team have a combined experience of 50 years providing the most up to date and accurate Real Estate advice.

Our negotiating skills and level of expertise is the envy of the Real Estate industry. In fact, we are the agent that other agents choose when they wish to sell.

Paul Castran

www.castrangilbert.com.au

Presentation is the key to achieve the highest possible sale price.

Nothing is clearer than when you look at how Australia’s great retailers present and merchandise their products. For example; Sportsgirl illuminate, air-condition, merchandise in size and colour and display in the highest retail fit out possible. This enables a substantial margin.

Presentation of your most valuable asset is paramount. We would suggest that one of Castran Gilberts representatives advise you on a case by case basis before you sell.

Paul Castran

Melbourne’s residential vacancy rate is hovering at around 0.5%.  This is the lowest vacancy rate since records have been kept 40 years ago!

Economic forecaster, BIS Schrapnel have reported that they expect residential rents to rise 50% over the next 5 years as there is an acute shortage of rental stock available.

Victoria’s current immigration is approximately 88,000 per year and Australia’s population is growing at the fastest rate since 1947.

Given these economic parameters, it is clearly a great time to buy real estate.

Auction clearance rates have fallen from 80 odd percent 12 months ago to around 53% currently giving further opportunities for people to purchase good value in the market.

The current economic commentary is that official interest rates are reported to fall to 3.75% by March next year!!

With falling interest rates and increasing rental values and the pressure put on available stocks with the first home owners grant, there is a cocktail for rapid growth in the under $500,000 market.

Paul Castran

www.castrangilbert.com.au